Subconsciously I must have been aware I’d wake up to Valentine’s Day. But at the time I wasn’t thinking about that, even though I’d (finally) just coaxed two of the boys to address and package their class Valentines.

I climbed into bed beside my husband who, for the first time in forever, was reading a book. The Hunger Games, if you must know, because I’d been hyping it up as a guilty pleasure to everyone I know. Of course, he downloaded it to my Nook, leaving me to either start a new book or dip into an old one I hadn’t yet finished. There’s lots of that unfinishing thing around here. For me. Always. But that’s another matter.

Before I decided on anything, I remembered a thought I’d had in the kitchen and reached for my long-lost journal to write it down. What came with it was a short list of Loves. To which I now hope to add. It’s appropriate for the holiday, of course, but I feel I often need these reminders of Love and Good and Happy in my life. Daily. There just can’t be too much of this.

___

I Love that family descends on the house for a holiday celebration and various kitchen items are inevitably left behind. I love that I can’t tell which Tupperware is mine or GG’s or Jen’s when I store the leftover thrown-together Minestrone Soup I made for dinner. Family is in the ordinary, all over my house.

I Love watching my kid play sports on Sundays, Game Day. One Basketball game. Two Soccer games (or more). One kid putting it all out there. Showing us what he’s learned. Working for the team. It’s easier to appreciate than spelling homework or math worksheets. So much more gratifying. (Maybe I just take spelling for granted?)

I Love finding “Thankful Cards” tucked away in my journal. Blue and green index cards that should have made it to the Thankful Box after dinner, but didn’t. Maybe they were pushed into my back pocket for later. Maybe they came out of my pocket when I put my jammies on for the night. And then here they are. Slipped in between my own pages. My own space. Reminding me that my kids are thankful for school–or were, on 9/13/2011–even though they fight me each morning with the getting dressed and brushing teeth and giving last hugs.

I Love pushing my body to work hard. Sweating just enough to remind me that my body works so hard for me every day and that it’s happy for this extra effort I’m putting it through.

I Love that my boys have brothers. That I have sons. That they are loud and that they fight and that they still know how to love. If I twist the angle by which I view their rough-housing and their screams, I see that they are learning how to get along in the world. That there is conflict and then there is resolution and we all have to work so, so hard to get through both.

I Love the way Ethan asks me for lunch: I want cheese on a sandwich on a plate cut in half with a drink and four oreos. On a plate. Cut in half.

I Love knowing that no matter what amount of money they make or how many things they learn or own, how many failures they have, how many successes, my kids will always know what I treasure most: family and honesty and showing your Love.

___

What do you Love?

Please share with me. Because Love is something there will never be too much of. Ever.

xo

Where have we been?
Sarah broke her wrist a few weeks back, so it’s been tough for her to write.
I have no such physical excuse. But I think maybe the blogging part of me broke a little bit recently. I’ve been pushing this place out of my mind, away from my consciousness.
It doesn’t feel right.
And yet, it feels a relief, too.
It’s so impossible to do it all. It’s so impossible to do even what needs to be done.
(I took the weekend off from laundry. Felt good at the time, but I know many of you don’t have to think too hard to envision the heaps of clothing that await me this week.)
I want to be here.
I want to write.
Sometimes the two connect and support each other.
Sometimes the two are at odds.
For now, I just want to say that Sarah and I both are here—even though we’re not landing in your in boxes very frequently.
Life is moving fast. I’m trying to slow it down.
And for now, that’s where my energies are.
I’ll be back on a more regular basis at some point.
And once her wrist is out of its brace and fully functional again, I’ll coax Sarah back here, too.
Thanks, as always, for reading.

She sat at the cafe, looking out at the falling snow. The mug in her palms was warm, hot almost. She imagined seeing the steam rise in streams, obscuring her vision. She imagined the snow coming down faster than it was. She imagined sitting in the same chair, in the same room, in the same position for the rest of the day.

The scent of the coffee was bitter, the taste sharp. She drank it down as quickly as she could without scalding her lips and throat. The day would begin before she could stop it. The skies would clear, and the sun would begin to show itself in long, angular rays bouncing off the tall buildings of her small, hometown city.

If they saw her, if they knew her thoughts right at this very moment, some of her friends would warn her of a pending depressive episode. She was prone to them, it was true. But today’s slow start and overwhelming feelings of disappointment were not symptoms of depression. If anything, today she was already falling prey to self-indulgence–the “woe is me” kind that comes after an evening of comparing one’s accomplishments to those of one’s friends. Or even to strangers, all of whom so often seemed to her to be much more accomplished, successful, happy.

She wasn’t worried, as she sat in the cafe, all of the empty tables surrounding her as the morning customers ordered their coffees and scones to go. She recognized what was happening. Regret. Shame. Frustration. She would fight the shutdown today. And she would persevere. But for now, as the window before her fogged just the tiniest bit in response to the invisible stream of her coffee’s rising steam, she would indulge. Wish. Think thoughts of “what if,” “if only” and “when.”

Sarah and I were talking yesterday about how lucky we are. There are so many reasons, of course, but our conversation centered around family. Our own childhoods, with engaged, educated, interesting, fun parents who each respected their children and encouraged us all to excel, to take risks, to grow. OK, we didn’t use those words during our chat, but that’s what it comes down to, isn’t it? Having good parents means so very much.

Now that we’re both in the thick of it, trying oh so hard to be good parents ourselves, we call upon our own childhood experiences more and more. We wonder how our own parents would have handled situations that we’re going through with our own kids now. We realize how very rare our own experience was——that our house was the house everyone wanted to be at. Sure our friends came by to eat the good food that dad always made sure stocked the kitchen: ice cream, chips, a dozen kinds of cereal, bagels, soda. And they came to swim in our pool or play basketball out back. But our friends also came because our parents welcomed them. And let them be who they were, just as they let us be who we were and who we were becoming.

There is so very much more to this topic. It is never ending, really, as we all try to offer our kids the best of all possible childhoods. After having another talk with Sarah about how our kids are so lucky to have their siblings and their cousins and a large extended family of love and tradition, I received a link to this video. It’s the same message in a slightly different——and slightly more sad——delivery. But there it is, loud and clear: Enjoy. Thank. Appreciate. Share. Do your best. Live together and with great appreciation for all that you have.

Today isn’t a “significant” day in the loss of our dad. It’s not his birthday or the anniversary of the day he died or Valentine’s Day——on which I always remember him and the year we sat at Pizza Hut as a family and he gave me and my siblings each a Valentine-themed pencil. But sometimes it’s the days that aren’t supposed to be significant that are most memorable.

We were lucky to share so many days together.
And we’re lucky to have so many memories to share.

But some days are still difficult.

Even as we children are lucky still, each with our own families of five now.
Even as a doting grandmother, who has so very many reasons to be proud.

Because I wrote this quickly. Because it’s Tuesday. Because I haven’t joined up in a very long time, I’m linking this post to Heather of the EO’s Just Write #19.

Too many words
Too little time

Instead of progress
There is procrastination

Waiting for opportunity
Accepting the impossible

Creativity and mothering:
Stop and go

“You might want to say awesome.”

Words straight out of my 3-year-old’s mouth. Apparently I didn’t praise her quickly enough–in this case for getting herself dressed.

Or maybe it wasn’t the getting dressed itself, rather the choice of clothing: A fleece pullover of dinosaur print that, not so incidentally, has a matching fleece dinosaur-print hat, complete with stegasaurus-like spikes. She was getting dressed for school–an event that happens only twice per week–and I gathered that she’d been planning the ensemble for some time.

Sweetie and I have laughed about this particular sentence spoken by our spirited and strong-willed daughter, who provides us with plenty of entertainment in the way of her expressive storytelling daily. But what has resonated with me, even a week after her announcement/request, is the truth and simplicity that young children don’t hesitate to ask for what they need. Whether it’s more juice, help tying a shoe or a hug, my kids are experts at letting their needs by known.

I am not good about asking for what I need. Not good at all. And although I’ve always felt this way, as far back as I can remember, I’m quite sure that when I was a child (at least before age 5, according to my mom, the esteemed GG), I was like any other kid, demanding attention or help any number of times in a given day.

As mothers so many of us remark on the number of times we hear “Mom!” “Mama!” “Mommy!” in a given day (or hour). Depending on the number of kids in the house, these demands come at increasing frequency and increasing decibels. Most days I crave silence.

But since this sweet, innocent remark from my precocious 3-year-old––my youngest and last child: “You might want to say [the briefest of pauses] awesome,” spoken while raising her eyebrows just the slightest bit, her huge dark brown eyes full of expectation, I’ve been thinking about how it happened that I lost this trait. When is it that I not only matured enough to be a little more resourceful but also withdrew excessively so as not to feel the right to need anything at all.

I recognize that even just a few years ago I might have laughed at my daughter and gone on with my day, jotting down her cute sentence on a scrap of paper nearby, intending to transcribe it in a more important place but ultimately losing it. I recognize that I’m changing. As I come out of the babyhood of my children, I’m spending just a tiny bit more time on me. And while I still don’t shower as often as I’d like or get enough sleep or have many clothes that fit, I do have more self awareness. I do have a few minutes to really think about how I feel. And why. And to try my best to express both, to myself and to the people I love.

I’m getting better. The awareness is continuing. I know I don’t need to do everything myself. (These three kids have had everything to do with this clarity.) And that it’s OK to ask for something without worrying too much about inconveniencing someone else. And while I still could stand to speak up a little louder when I need a pat on the back, I also know that I will always have a hard time putting myself first. Fortunately for all of us I don’t foresee myself changing my firm belief that the kids should come first. And I want my children always to be able to tell me what they need, even if I can’t always be the one to give it to them right away.

As it turns out, I’m not doing so badly.

I said, “Awesome!”

I knew what I wanted. A book on my shelf with my name on its spine.

I set a goal. A weekly goal. A yearly goal. A goal related to a certain age. That age. The one that used to signify over the hill but that now might be a mark of the last years of youth. Except for a soft middle, crowed eyes, gray hair on me, this woman who is so, so tired. I don’t feel young. I feel like I am at a place where the opportunities slip away faster than they come to light. I feel as if I may be up against my last chance to move toward that spine. Those initials of mine embossed into the hardcover of a novel telling the story of characters I created.

I knew what I wanted. I know what I want. It doesn’t change. It’s been the same since long before I dared want anything more than the family I now have in riches. The family I wanted and that came my way with such little effort by me I wonder if I’m spoiled by the ease of attaining my life’s goals.

I know what I want. I know what I have. It’s the dichotomy of riches. How do I confidently move forward, celebrating and nurturing my successes in one area and pursuing with optimism the risks that are so daunting in another? Creation and creativity pulling me in such different directions.

At the beginning of a New Year again I haven’t dared write it down. The goal is the same. Reality is changing every day. There are needs to be met that aren’t my own, and they are more important—at least right now. And so I will tend to the children, to my relationship, to my family. I will not set unattainable goals. I will take each day as it comes and do the best that I can and squeeze in a few minutes for writing when I can.

With 2012 will come age 40 for me. But even if I don’t get my manuscript finished before that day eight months from now I will have lots more to show for these 365 days: So much of what I wanted when I dared to want more. Three children. A partner in it all. A home to call our own.

This post is part of today’s Write On Edge linky.

Jen and I have often talked about creativity. How it is a blessing and a curse. Our daily lives consist of those daily-type things. You all know them well. They bring you up and they bring you down and then you find a way to just plateau and get them done.

But creativity always seems to work itself into the day somehow. Not being creative, exactly, but having creative ideas. And no where to put them. Because there is no time for that in the daily grind, the plateau is easier than managing the ups and downs while fitting in the creative part, too.

But you see, I was talking to another friend about that creativity thing just yesterday. And I find that if I have the time to talk about it and think about it I should also have the time to DO something about it. Even in fragments of 5 minutes or less, in between wiping a child butt and pouring juice into a child cup and retrieving a child from school.

So here we are. Striving to let the creativity out of the bag. Maybe it’s just another symptom of the oh-it’s-2012-and-the-world-is-all-new-and-shiny-again mentality. That tricky little New Year’s bug gets into all of us, one stinking way or another. I haven’t made any resolutions this year. I’ve set some goals but I think of those much more seriously and I forgive myself a lot more when I fail to meet them quite exactly, or meeting them takes longer than a person thinks it should. In fact, I have set no time limit whatsoever on my goals. I need it that way. Deadlines make me itchy and only push me to give up faster than it took me to dream them up in the first place.

My kids bumble around the house and play with new Christmas toys and readjust to the real life of school and soccer practice, bedtime and go-go-go from the moment they first awake. I, too, bumble around the house and readjust to a new shade of life. Is it the New Year? Is it the startlingly cold temperatures we’ve had? Is it those goals that I’ve written down–in conjunction with my husband–that have me figuring out how to navigate today so that tomorrow I can feel I accomplished something? No matter what it is–and it really doesn’t matter, I’m a new color, hue, shade, whathaveyou.

I’m never quite sure of anything anymore. And least sure of what I want to write here on the ol’ blog, as Jen puts it. We’ve been here awhile, in this space, and we’ve been on bottom and we’ve been on top and now we just are. Maybe I’ve been waiting for this spot all along. To just be.

A year ago I was most uncomfortable with the just-being part of living. I didn’t dare sit still and contemplate my life, my self, my thoughts. I’d try to sit still but just get wrapped into a tangle of thick vines and sturdy leaves and have trouble finding any meaning to the feeling of being trapped, tangled up and trapped in my thoughts. But several weeks ago my husband made mention of an everyday Saturday morning wherein he found me behind my closed office door. I was sitting in the corner chair, listening to some lovely tunes, ignoring the children and the mess that inhabited every other area of the house except my office. I had a book on my lap but I wasn’t reading. I was sitting and I was thinking, I guess. I wonder if I was listening to the lyrics of that sweet melodic voice coming from the speakers, or if I was making a plan for the day. I don’t know if I was there because I was happy or I was sad or I was recovering from some other emotion that may have overtaken me the day before, the hour before. I was just sitting, he said. Sitting and listening to music and I looked so content and so peaceful and he wished he had more of that. Music. Peace. Sitting still. Thoughts that didn’t revolve around work and business and schedules.

I hadn’t realized it at the time–obvious by this point–but I was crafting my own little perfect space away from it all. I wasn’t fixated on something, I don’t think. I was just me. Part of me was old and part of me was new and I was sitting with them both. Contentedly. For as long as it would last.

He kissed me gently and left the house. I’m sure the kids soon invaded my space and I turned off my music and fixed up their breakfast and broke up their fights. But I had those few moments. I can see them still. The light outside was so dim and the air inside was so warm and I was sipping hot coffee and drifting my head back into the chair and just… ahh.

So I guess what I’m saying, if I’m saying anything at all, is that I have to make time for the creativity. I have to remember what it means to sit still. And that, as I wrote a dear friend of mine today, I am in the garden of my life. Everything is lush all around me. I should feel fortunate for all the creative ideas that come. I should try my best to do something with them because I know they are a result of the lushness. But that I also must seep into the moss sometimes and hold steady, because being a part of the lushness means just as much as creating something from it.

Less personal narrative.
More fictional creations.
What you just might find here
(on Jen’s writing days) in 2012.

I first published the letter below last January, at the outset of 2011. As I re-read it tonight I felt sad and empty with the realization that a few short months after I wrote those words, I lost that self for a time. I should elaborate. But what’s most important is that I’m back now. My better self found. Or I’m here again: In this place, thinking about the living that happens beyond the writing. So much has changed this past year. And yet what is important is so fully the same. The people with whom I share this life, my place in the world: My sweet love. Our remarkable children. Tonight my eyes are open wide. I’m smiling. I’m full. And in 2012 I intend to keep this focus all year long. Call it a resolution. I resolve to stay true. Grateful. For all the gifts of my days.

********

Dear Self,
I like you these days. This you that is less concerned with the things that don’t matter too much—like the state of the floor, clothes strewn, toys scattered. Or the unmade beds and unwashed children. (Are you sensing a trend, self?)
I like you. I like your kindness these days. Your more lighthearted self. There is so much that is difficult, namely finances and mothering—knowing what is right and being able to do right by your family. The other stuff—the messy house, the extra five pounds, the hair that grows increasingly longer down your back, the missed PTO meetings—they just aren’t as important.
I like you because every single day—the good days and the bad—you are appreciating the people in your household. Your four. All five of you. Yes! You are appreciating even yourself!
I like you because you aren’t being quite so hard on yourself. I like you because you are truly happy. I like you because there is a big picture that is coming back and it is allowing the closer picture to come into better focus.
Self, I like you now. This is a good place. Do your best to stay in this mindset of goodness. Don’t be afraid to venture out, but do try to come back here.
Love,
Me. (You?)