The noise and the mess was a lot to handle. Not to mention the plain issue of just keeping track of where all the little live bodies were in space and time. And what they were planning to put in their mouth at that exact second.

Eventually, though, it eased up. And with that has come the vault of my own past opening up.

Even though I am fairly nostalgic, I don’t actively think about my childhood a great deal. Now and then, though, I realize that my memories — and Colin’s too — are becoming a very real part of my kids’ life, playing out like an a digitally remastered movie in front of me.

The Street Where We Lived

We lived on a dead-end street growing up, with no fear of any traffic. There were two sturdy maple trees in my front yard. The red maple was better for climbing, however.

With all my siblings, and the neighbor kids, it was an outdoor free-for-all. We knew every kind of tag. We ran in the maze of the poured concrete foundation before they finished building Mr. Petty’s house.

Across the street we had an empty grassy lot where we played kickball and volleyball and Ghost Comes Out at Midnight. At the end of our 7-house street, there was another empty lot, for most of my early years, till Marty’s two-part house moved in on two big trucks.

And, best of all, at the end of the road was a huge field the size of four city blocks. It was just long, unmowed grass, mulberry bushes, and apple trees. At the bottom of the hill, scrub trees grew up and ran along the railroad tracks there. I am not sure if this land was own in part by the railroad, or by the hospital down the street. Probably a bit of both.

A couple times a summer, an anonymous guy on a big John Deere would come and mow the field, but for the most part, it grew wild. We’d play “Planet of the Apes” and hide in the long grass. We’d get all manner of bug bites and chigger bites, but it didn’t seem to stop us. We’d explore the woods along the track, and climb up the apple trees. We built a tree fort behind a neighbor’s house in the perfect three-leader tree, and argued over it happily. Until little Terry pooped under it and we all but abandoned it.

I know I was lucky to be a younger sibling. I am sure my older brothers and sisters were told to keep an eye on us little ones. Maybe they did, but I don’t remember having to do that. I just remember the freedom — the expectation — to roam in the summer and to be kept busy with our own thoughts and the friends who happen to live nearby.

And to holler “Here I am!” when Mom heard the sound of the train whistle and called to us to answer.

Into the Woods

Now I am not a kid anymore and I live on the busy East Coast. Now “times have changed.”

A few days ago, all the kids were outside and Isaiah was on the driveway when it started to rain. Not a bit of a drizzle, but sudden downpour. Isaiah’s face lit up and he spread his arms wide. I called them to come in, but I flashed back to the hot summer day that mom sent us all outside in the rain in our swimsuits.

Aniah poked her head in. “It’s raining.”

“I see that. Why don’t you get your raingear on and head out. Tell the others.”

Her face filled with a whopping grin.

As I watched them stomp through the puddles, I could recall exactly the grit of the worn blacktop on my street, and the curve of the fast water as it rushed down the little slope towards the main road. My own feet tingled with the memory of our sidewalk’s gritty texture, and the smooth relief of our front stoop.

“Mom!” Kiki said breathlessly in the doorway. “My dress is soaked!”

“Well, might as well just take your rain jacket off.”

“REALLY!?! Can I roll around in the grass?”

The Past Travels Forward

I think my mother said no to us often as well. She must have had to, for the same reasons. Mom was happiest at home, she always said. I can see why. It’s the safe place, where the kids can be free to roam in their yard, and in their imaginations.

Sometimes I remember a moment from my past, and I can’t believe that I am not there, that I can’t get back there. I don’t feel anything you’d expect in that moment — not remorse or sadness or grief. Just a complete sense of disbelief. How can something so real and true be so untouchable?

I know I can write it down, to remember it. I can even dream about it, to relive it again. But I am starting to see that the past only travels forward in our children, and what we have to teach and sing and offer.

Creating is not remembering… It is to look and to hear and to write — without remembering. It is the immediate feelings arranged in words as they occur to me.” — Gertrude Stein

Sun up, an everyday habit.

We are all in our ruts, our patterns, our habits. It’s a relief, I suppose, to discover they are all ours, to share.

I am pretty often hearing the admonishment to “live in the moment.” I feel I am pretty good at this, and the reason is because I fail all the time to interrupt myself in the midst of repeating pattern behaviors. I say: “I will change. I wil be different tomorrow,” or even in the next moment, but then there I go, off “living in the moment” and I fall back into the same habits. I am so busy creating my life, I find it hard to remember to make the many alterations that I say I should do.

This “new age” ideology seems to argue against the idea that our life stories are already “told” by some higher being. It seems like a dichotomy of self and identity: am I already determined? Or can I, tomorrow, be someone new and reinvented? If only I remember to do it.

Or is that already determined?

I drive down East Main Street for the millionth time — having the experience my own Mom must have had once upon a time.

“I drove these old streets to death. What a rut. Will I always?” That’s one way the thought turns.

Then, a month or so later, the thought turns again, and I drive under a canopy of trees filling in, my eyes taking in the renovation of the an old corner deli and I catch hold in my heart for a moment the small business dream inside, and I realize this is my Gilmore Girl HOME. The idea of it changes me with one subtle heart flutter.

And then I am driving down East Main and asking Mom on my hands-free device the existential question of why why why we have to all live life exactly the same — though we think we aren’t — and learn it and hurt the same way, all over again. And Mom is listening and smoking and she just says she isn’t sure, but I guess probably she’s glad to hear that I’ve arrived somewhere she’s already visited.

And now I’m wondering what islands in the Ocean of Time she’s seen and can’t explain but knows, as she blows out her smoke, that I will get to also some day.

Those of you who were elementary schoolers in the late 70s and 80s: Could you please share a few books that you read then that meant a lot to you? Or that you just super loved?

I responded right away without thinking. The “Little House” books and the “Great Brain” books.

This is the cover to “The Great Brain” that I remember! Don’t you hate when they put the dumb movie covers on the books?!

My friend’s post went on to generate 97 comments, including a couple from her old Bookmobile driver! OY!

I loved scanning through the list so much (as did others) that I decided to compile the list of books here. This is a combined effort, so I take no credit for the super-awesomeness of this list, other than being grateful for having readerly friends with even more, similarly bookish friends.

Note: The links go to to Goodreads.com, where you can see the old covers, read reviews, and order if you want, from Amazon, Powells, B&N, Kindle, Indiebooks, or many others, including my fave, Paperbackswap.com.

A List of Books for Elementary School Kids, Compiled (in No Particular Order) by some Great Brains of the ’70s.

1. The Little House series, by Laura Ingalls Wilder
2. The Great Brain series, by John D. Fitzgerald.
3. My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George
4. Beezus and Ramona, (the series) by Beverly Cleary
5. Beverly Cleary in general!
6. The Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis
7. Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Patterson
8. Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White
9. Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls
10. The Hundred Dresses by by Eleanor Estes, Louis Slobodkin (Illustrations)
11. Madeleine L’Engle books (such as A Wrinkle in Time)
12. Babysitter’s Club Books by Ann M. Martin
13. All-of-a-Kind Family series by Sydeny
14. The Cricket in Times Square and Harry Cat’s Pet Puppy by George Seldon
15. Hotel for Dogs  by Lois Duncan
16. The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson
17. Lafcadio, The Lion Who Shot Back by Shel Silverstein
18. Doctor De Soto by William Steig
19. Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell
20. Little Women  by Louisa May Alcott
21. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
22. Anne of Green Gables series by L.M. Montgomery
23. The Encyclopedia Brown series by Donald J. Sobol
24. The 18th Emergency by Betsy Byars
25. Ginger Pye, and the Moffats Series, by Eleanor Estes
26. Misty of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry
27. Trixie Belden mysteries by Julie Campbell
28. Anything by author Edward Eager (Time Garden, Half Magic, Knight’s Castle, etc.),
29. A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett
30. The ‘Gypsy’ Horse Trilogy by Sharon Wagner (A Horse Named Gypsy, Gypsy and the Moonstone Stallion, Gypsy and Nimblefoot)
31. Miracles on Maple Hill by Virginia Sorenson
    

    This image is from a (out-of-date) blog I found called “Deep Valley Sun” and as far as I can tell it was used for planning an entire Betsy-Tacy convention! (take that Trekkies!) This post was from the planning post for the Besty-Tacy 5K! What the what?! I have never the read the Betsy-Tacy books, and now I’m a little nervous!

32. The Bunnicula series by Deborah Howe and James Howe
33. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith (more for teens and grown-ups!)
34. The Betsy-Tacy series by Maud Hart Lovelace
35. The Velvet Room and The Egypt Game, both by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
36. The Boxcar Children series by Gertrude Chandler Warner
37. The Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle series by Betty MacDonald
38. The Hardy Boys series by Franklin W. Dixon
39. The Nancy Drew series by Carolyn Keene
40. Jacob I Have Loved by Katherine Paterson
41. Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene
42. Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine (#3 of a series) by Jay Williams
43. Number the Stars by Lois Lowry
44. The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle by Avi
45. Caddie Woodlawn by Carol Ryrie Brink
46. Anything by author E. Nesbit
47.  Black and Blue Magic by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
48. From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg
49. The Henry Reed Series by Keith Robertson
50. Happy Hollisters series by Jerry West, et al
51. Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O’Brien
52. The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon (I mean Noel) by Ellen Raskin
53. A Ring of Endless Light, in the Austin Family series by Madeleine L’Engle
54. Ballet Shoes (#1 of the ‘Shoes’ Series) by Noel Stratfield
55. Nate the Great series by Marjorie Weinman Sharmat
56. Black Cauldron (Book #2 of The Chronicles of Prydain series) by Lloyd Alexander
57. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
58. Smoky, the Cowhorse by Will James
59. Watership Down by Richard Adams
60. The Walrus and the Carpenter by Lewis Carroll
61. The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
62. Pippy Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren
63. A Day no Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck
64. The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare
    

    One of my daughters just finished this. She’s in 2nd grade. Neither of us could pronounce it and I couldn’t remember it well. Then we found out these horses are REAL and that a friend of ours camped near there his whole life! (It’s ‘SINK-oh-teeg,’ by the way. Thanks, Mark!)

65. D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths by Ingri d’Aulaire and Edgar Parin d’Aurlaire
66. The Cat Ate My Gymsuit by Paula Danziger
67. Mrs. Mike by Benedict Freedman and Nancy Mars Freedman
68. Ice Cream for Two by Clare Turlay Newberry
69. Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh
70. The Phantom Tollbooth by Norman Juster
71. The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin
72. Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
73. Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster & Elaine Showalter
74. Old Yeller by Fred Gipson
75. The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
76. David Eddings fantasy series, The Belgariad and The Mallorean 
77. The Borrowers series by Mary Norton
78. A Long Way from Chicago (Trilogy) by Richard Peck
79. James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl

–

I am sure there are so many more! Also, I am sure there other awesome  ”great books” lists out there, but what I loved about this list was the nostalgia of it, the smell of the old library coming back to us as we were all listing our favorites!

This particular list is limited to books loved by young readers in and around the ’70s,  the ones we are now passing down to our own kids.

Do you have any to add to the list? Books in different genres, of poetry, or something just blatantly missing?

Talk about a time when you were driving and you sang in the car, all alone. Why do you remember this song and that stretch of road?

sent me back immediately to a moment in time, October 2010.

I was in the middle of two major and  intersecting life renovations. Both of them beat me up emotionally and twisted up my sense of identity. The experience (construction of a new room, and construction of four children) created so much noise in my life, any chance of ever being alone with my thoughts felt like its own kind a circus.

I don’t remember the song. It’s incidental to the moment. I do remember the wave of every day longing that echoed across the few brief moments of “me time.”

Here is the post I wrote that day.

Ordinary Rockstar

On Accidental Meetings with Angst

Today I was driving in the minivan across the river, when it hit me.

I needed to screech.

All these letter-perfect songs played themselves out over the speakers all day, telling me that the dull edged blade I was balancing on was tuned just right.

I kept opening my mouth to sing along. But I couldn’t make a sound.

Except to scream at the top of my lungs.

Everybody Hurts. Sometimes.

The most frightening truth I have met while driving around in my life is that no matter how enormous my heart swells, and no matter how many trillions of pieces I feel as though I’ve shattered into, at the end of the day, I see that I am (like you and everyone else), quite simply:

ORDINARY.

I carry around a heavy bridge. I need it for the canyon crossing.  On one side is my tall, lanky, rockstar, who says all the right things at the right times and who rolls around in perfect love and desire.

On the other is that stubby, fuzzy-haired suburban housewife. The one I never recognize in the reflection in a store window.

Most of the time, I am pretty good at dispelling the rockstar. I am grounded. I’ve let bygones be bygones. I push down the teased hair and zen out on the soccer field sidelines. I am one with the juice box.

But once in awhile, by accident, something or someone reminds me of the other possibility. The raking hot coals get stoked because they weren’t ever completely cold.

And I look downdowndown. Into the canyon, swaying on the ropey bridge. My knees shudder and melt away.

It’s hard to identify “ordinary” at these moments. Even if I know they are.

A few good rockstar screams help.

–

Thanks to the Scintilla Project leaders for great prompts. Read more great stories by popping over to #Scintilla13 on Twitter.

Moving to England?

Hello lovely Warrington. I miss you.

Concerned about being lonely and ostracized due to your homeland’s generalized ignorance, poor eating habits, and moronically Machiavellian leadership?

DON’T WORRY! It’s simple! Just follow these easy, tried-and-true steps!

1. Study important films from your host country to create an understanding of what ALL the people in that country will be like before you go. Suggestions include “Four Weddings and a Funeral,” “Bridget Jones’s Diary,” and that other funny one with Hugh Grant… Oh! “Notting Hill.”
2. Buy ticket to London.
3. Sell almost everything you own, except your sweaters, your brown shoes, your quietest rain jacket, and your spare liver.
4. Arrive in London.
5. Take a cab from the airport to new flat.
6. Pay for cab and realize that Heathrow Express really would have been cheaper.
7. Wedge yourself into the flat.
8. Spend next week wishing you’d sold even more of your sweaters.
9. Get job at a the local pub.
10. Spend one week trying to understand landlord’s East London accent.
11. Give up on that project and just focus on why he keeps asking “you alright?”
12. Develop low self-esteem due to lack of tips and very ugly yellow shirt required to wear.
13. Insult minimum 27 New Zealanders by guessing they are Aussies.
14. Discover suddenly one day that “You alright?” means “How are you?” and just laugh and laugh and laugh.
15. Meet one Canadian whose name is the same as your spouse.
16. Marvel that another Canadian could have the same name as your spouse.
17. Discover fellow Canadian ALSO has the same mind-blowingly boring hobby as said spouse.
18. Insist the two meet.
19. Immediately call spouse and order him to come the pub to meet fellow Canadian.
20. Wait 15 minutes for spouse to appear.
21. Buy two pints of lager for spouse and “new friend” with so-called “tip” money.
22. Watch as spouse and other Canadian make friends.
23. Sidle over to “clean the ashtray.”
24. Acted surprised when Canadian introduces you to other friends at the table. “Oh hello! Yes, I do know what you drink haha… I can name them ALL!”
25. Sit down right then and start blabbing face off.
26. Repeat step 25 at least 3-4 times a week for month.
27. Ignore all signs of class anxiety or social discomfort.
28. Go to Dover for the weekend, despite protests and questions of why oh why would you.
29. Allow absence to grow the hearts fondly.
30. Return to London.
31. Go to pub and “run into” new friends
32. Tell them about the wonders of Dover and blow their minds.
33. Join new friends for drink whenever they text you! You are in!!

–

Thanks to the ladies from The Scintilla Project for today’s prompt:

Tell a story about something interesting (anything!) that happened to you, but tell it in the form of an instruction manual (Step 1, Step 2, etc.).

When I needed a tooth pulled, dad numbed my gums with whiskey.

My dad taught me how to refresh his 7&7 when I was not much older than seven. This was during my parents wild “card” parties where couples came over and played a game I will never understand or or expect anyone to pronounce correctly: Pinochle. It’s PEEEEE-knuckle.

My older sister got drunk and puked right in front of me when I was about 12. This wasn’t a habit of hers, just a teen thing, but I do remember it.Vividly. That is a sound you just don’t forget.

My family grew up with a second refrigerator, in the basement. Now when I look back, I don’t think that all families had two fridges back then, the way everyone does now.

It was, in fact, a beer fridge, though mostly for storage. It really wasn’t used as a “we-have-to-have-a-second-fridge-because-we-go-through-so-much-beer-and-also-maybe-we-should-think-about-inventing-a way-to-tap-a-pony-keg-through-the-door!” sort of fridge. Actually I think we just had it because we had six kids and my mom’s brain curdled trying to figure out how to store normal food, plus all those frozen waffles and Swiss steaks, and cookie dough.

I actually came of age in the era of Bartles and Jaymes. These were not the alco-pops of nowadays, but they WERE the ancestor. Fortunately for young livers everywhere, they tasted like pure ass. I drank one. Exactly one. Then went back to Boone’s Farm.

Coming of (Almost) Age

Me Not Drunk, Just, Well, Inappropriate (Sorry Troy)

By the time I made it to college, on my own, you can imagine how it all went down. That’s right.

I didn’t really drink.

Nah. I mean, at parties I have one now and then. A beer or three.

But I had a problem.

I was already a rowdy, inappropriate idiot WITHOUT alcohol. If I drank, I’d just end up tired and staring off to the right.

Besides, I was Pretty Well Certain (as all young people are) that everyone was highly amused by my Antics.

Now I can see (by both deep personal reflection and also examination of this photo) that probably only about 66.6 percent of the people were. At least one-third of the people were probably annoyed or unimpressed. Or maybe they were just kinda tired from drinking three wine coolers.

Fortunately I was smart enough to save up my really hard drinking days for when I was older, and legal-er and for after I met the “appropriate” people to drink with.

Most of those people were ALL of the people I drank with in The Warrington Hotel in London, including my alcohol-drinking training coach, Frances, who once, in the same weekend, hung out with Bobby Flay and also passed out in the gravel underneath an SUV in a parking lot. The two incidences are not related.

It was during that time that I actually fell down drunk. I was walking home from the pub and just fell. On the ground. No I didn’t trip. I was just walking along in my happy, post-pub jolly land and BOOM. Hello ground.

I have to admit: I sort of feel like I’ve checked something off my bucket list that I would never have thought to put on it.

Now I mostly only drink to relax, which since leaving London means one and done. And since I am a parent, I can feel the need to relax at any time of the day or night. So my latest skill is “flexible” drinker. I can also swing as well: from beer to wine to whiskey (thanks Dad!) to margaritas  though preferably not on the same afternoon.

Regardless, I still just prefer to be inappropriate, without having to rely on alcohol. It seems so much more sensible.

–

Thanks to the ladies from The Scintilla Project for today’s prompt:

Tell a story about a time you got drunk before you were legally old enough to do

I admit it: when it comes to Twitter writing projects, I am such a sucker.

Well, that assumes of course that getting myself tangled up with an online community of like-minded thinkers and writers (99 percent of whom I have never met!) makes me a sucker. Yes, please. I’ll take another lick of that.

So yes, I am partaking in my third-in-a-row online writing project January I did some Mindful Writing with Satyavani (Fiona Robyn) and the WOWH community. That spurred a month of short poems in the form of small stones.

February was National Letter Writing Month, led by author Mary Robinette Kowal. I loved writing daily letters so much that I can’t stop! It’s apparently addictive.

This month (well, fortnight) I am Scintilla-ating (and you can too!), with quite of few of the tweeps I have met along the way. The Scintilla Project is simply the chance to write your stories on your blog based on prompts given. A great way to enjoy the twitter community, freshen up the head space, and heave-ho us writers out of this dismal winter and into spring.

By the way, in case you haven’t, you can click the “subscribe by email” button the top right corner. That hand feature emails new posts to you anytime.

Of course, then there is APRIL, which happens to be National Poetry Month… hmmm. I wonder what I will be doing then??

A year ago, I (unintentionally!) kicked a little snowball down a snowy hill, and I discovered how cold and mean life can be.

I am awfully terrible at telling personal stories, and since this story has intertwined a few other hearts of people I love, I am not going to go into details. It is a story of how I lost “faith.”

Also the story includes some people I freely admit I hate. And I hate even thinking about them so I am not going to go there.

I don’t think I could backtrack over that ugly place anyway, in a way that makes sense to anyone. Except to say that I learned the hard way that trust and betrayal are a hair’s breadth apart. And they are hopelessly entangled with my  own fears, and also my perception of the world  anyway.

I know, my heart has driven me down irrational backroads, with so many jarring and messy potholes, when it comes to “faith” I don’t know where I am anymore.

And none of this means anything to any of you. It’s personal. I don’t even know why I bother to write about it, except I can’t believe that, one year later, I am still so sad to have gotten lost.

–

I had an old boyfriend once upon a time. I remember it took a long time, too, for me to realize he was no good for me. He was a soul-eater, a life-sucker, a love-hog. It took years, even after I left him, for the sheen to wear off. But when it did, it was OVER. Now I look back on that time and have no sensory recall of the love. I have memories, but the feelings are gone.

This is not the case with most others I have loved and left behind. It’s true. I am notorious for revisiting my memories of love, polishing them off and enjoying their reflective sunshine. Old lovers have claimed folding chairs in the backyard of my memory. They are now most excellent old friends, and I revel those sunny gardens.

–

I think, if someone tries, really tries, to love you, then the love carries on. Forgiveness happens. Even if all they ever did with you was make mistakes or bumble around or turn corners when you weren’t looking.

I also think, sometimes we think people care about us, and they just plain don’t. We believe we are following after them, but all we are doing is chasing a shadow.

I’ve given a lot of that love, and I know I have been the shadow in my time, too.

–

Advice

My hazard wouldn’t be yours, not ever;
But every doom, like a hazelnut, comes down
To its own worm. So I am rocking here
Like any granny with her apron over her head
Saying, lordy me. It’s my trouble.
There’s nothing to be learned this way.
If I heard a girl crying help
I would go to save her;
But you hardly ever hear those words.
Dear children,
You must try to say
Something when you are in need.
Don’t confuse hunger with greed;
And don’t wait until you are dead.

– by Ruth Stone

Well, to put it more clearly, she called from an inpatient psych ward.

My friend and I have known each other now as long as we have not known each other… longer actually. And since she met her husband about 3 weeks after I met her, that friendship is just as solid.

When my girlfriend called, I didn’t understand what she was talking about. She was euphoric, chortling.

She seemed absolutely relieved and ecstatic to be where she was.

However, as I listened to her, this didn’t surprise me. Often when we are together, her thoughts bounced around like a pinball… eventually they’d land somewhere that made sense and I’d get a chance to catch up.

Anyway, even when they didn’t — which was the case yesterday — everything she said to me was perfectly clear. 

In this case, she was erratic. She had finally “reconnected” with an old boyfriend/soulmate. She wanted me to read the Bible… or at the very least, she wanted me to watch for empirical signs of “meaning” in the animated Tinkerbell movie. “Which one?” I asked. She wasn’t sure. Oh and could I send her another blank journal to fill?

–

Later, when I listened to her husband’s morose story about the last year with her (they live far away, so we see each other rarely), I thought — Oh my love… oh my sweet darling … where did you step off the path?

–

My friend used to take photos and paint. She used to ride her bike, and wear thrift store clothes and pay with cash or checks for everything. She’d eat oatmeal for a week if she didn’t have the money to buy bread and ham. The elaborate life of credit and gym memberships and preschools didn’t exist in any remote corner of her mind.

Now she’s a “grown up” and she lives in a suburb of a huge sprawling city. She’s a partner in an established family. She works. The last job she held had her commuting 1.5 hours on a train — one way. She loves to work, but her creative mind doesn’t jive with the wildly linear people she seems to always ram up against.

She works out at the gym daily. It was the only thing that makes her feel sane and in control. And she has 2 children to raise (because, after all, she’s the MOM), even though she really never wanted children.

–

Last year, she got pregnant again. I was surprised when she told me. But I thought maybe the idea of being a Mom had finally softened in her. I know regardless of her initial feelings, she adored her beautiful children, even if she was terrified of herself as a parent. She did everything possible to make their lives insanely healthy. Organic everything, homemade all the time… I learned what quinoa was from her because her kids ate it daily.

–

If saying that you are in a “psych ward” might sound like saying “I’m in hell” or “I’m in a Thai prison,” would you please call me? Because I disagree. I doesn’t sound that way at all to me. Don’t you remember how much simpler life was when you were 5? Or 10? Before the onslaught? Even just in college, taking classes and working a bit?

Then something happens.

I know it did for me. Maybe it’s work, or maybe it’s family, or age, but it seems like there’s a threshold of tolerance. And if we don’t take care of ourselves, we pass over that threshold without a thought. Pile on the responsibilities and the “sure I can help with that” until before you know it… something gives.

–

I so so love my family, but they are an enormous energy suck. If I let them, they’d never stop asking for things. Or “not doing” things that get left for me to do. And if I let myself, I’d never stop feel badly about what I didn’t get done today, what I didn’t do right by them. I’d keep on spinning it over in my mind at night.

–

I hurt my leg a week or so ago and I’ve been hobbling around. It hurts alot and I’ve been testy and not myself. I’ve been trying to rest it and elevate, but it still hurts! And I don’t realize how this impacts my kids. Kiki said today: “Oh I can’t wait till Mom smiles again!”

I was stunned.

–

I don’t know what to do or say, really, to help my friends and their children. They are so far away. The task of unwinding from such brutal personal handiwork is long and tedious.

So I’ll ask you all to think about them for a minute, with compassion.

And then, I’ll wish for you to think about yourself, too — overstretched as you are — in the same way.

Is it a misnomer? Maybe… Originally my blog was “Letters from London (and Elsewhere)” and it was really just a way for me to — en masse — “post” to a bunch of friends back in the States about what was going on in London while I was over there. This was in the early days of blogging, when it wasn’t a “thing.”

But even then, as the letter format went, I was always pretty stinky at it.

I think I know why…

I think I always had a hard time with the whole “audience” thing. Like, who’s my audience?  Who am I writing this so-called letter to?

Is my sister reading this? Or my former professor? Or my auntie? Or my ex-boyfriend? Because if so, I have COMPLETELY different things to tell each of them about the Tower of London.

I don’t think I’ve ever figured out that whole audience thing. That’s why hardly ANYBODY reads this blog. It’s weirdly stilted, a bit distant, and I don’t post that often.

I’m sometimes HILARIOUS and other times I’m crabby and know-it-all-ish. And sometimes I’m way too melancholy.

About the only people who can deal with all that crazy is my sister Mary and one ex-boyfriend I won’t name, and maybe a few wildly empathetic internet friends that I’d personally like to carry around in my pocket.

The upshot of all this mumbling is that IF I know my audience, and I’m not feeling strangely exposed on the internet, I write fantastic stuff. You know, the sort of thing you get in a one-on-one situation. That is to say, I give good letter. REAL letter.

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And that’s good, because this February, I am participating in A Month of Letters, a challenge started online by Chicago-based author Mary Robinette Kowal. The goal for the month is to:

1. write and post one snail mail letter (or postcard) a day during the month of February (excluding Sundays and President’s Day)
2. Answer every letter you receive

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I love to receive letters. But I am also decent at math (thanks Mom!) I’ve got my own personal formula in my head to understand how it’s gotta happen if I want to get a letter.  I’ve got to send at least 3-4 letters, to get one back. Some friends will write back, some of the time. Some won’t write, ever, any of the time. Sometimes I won’t write back, for whatever reason.

I love to receive letters. Don’t you?? And YEAH, I think I can find 10 or so minutes a day to scribble a note to a friend.

So me grease me up! I’m getting ready for February. Hope to get something from you in my inbox

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Want to get a letter from me? Great! Send me your details here!