Category — Inside My Head

Is it an ocean of grace?  Or an ocean of regrets.

Are we what we do?  Or how we feel.

Or something different, something in between, something the size and shape of the perfect smooth rock that you close your hand around, just to feel its weight.

I have been struggling with anxiety again lately. It’s okay, I’m okay. It is not fear, I have nothing to fear.  It is a sort of discomfort in my own skin.  I can’t relax, can’t enjoy.

But I’m learning to observe it from the outside. The best way is to be the author, the painter, showing what I see, not bringing things into the tangle.

I am learning to be silent, to silence the seething within with patience and gentleness.

Those are not true feelings, Ducky, just fold that laundry and make it really smooth.

It’s okay to sit and read for a minute, don’t jump up just yet, Love.

Did you see that glimpse of river through the jungle?

Did you see those short cows in the road, confused and clustered around each other? I laughed, you can laugh, too.

You haven’t done anything wrong.

*

I’ve been picking up hitchhikers lately, on my scooter. Not who you might think of, when you think of a hitchhiker.  These are old ladies, looking for a ride to the village center. I almost wrote elderly, and then I erased it, because the term doesn’t seem to apply, here.  They are old, but not elderly. They wear saris, but sometimes tucked up between their legs, like a dhoti. They are carrying their bags for the market.

They are surprised when I stop.  And they hop on the back, sitting side saddle, the way traditional women do, and some are so light that I can barely tell they are there, while some rock the scooter a bit and I have to re-evaluate the way we take the turns.  I drive slowly.

And then I have made a friend for life.

*

I haven’t been the best friend to myself.  Today we meditated on the wisdom that comes from above, that is first pure, then peaceable, then gentle, then open to reason, then sincere… There were others, I don’t have a bible on hand right now. (You can read it in James 3: 13-18)

Gentleness is a great gift.  I will ask for it and wield it in my house, with my family, spread it on my table like a cloth, throw it on the walls like a bucket of water, so it runs down and covers all of our mistakes (and hopefully washes some of the crayon off the walls.)

And then I will wrap it around the small stone that I have in my hand, like a blanket.

Well, not to be a tease or anything, but I didn’t get my list done. It’s taking more time than I thought it would, because I really want it to be a good list, a fun list, a thought-provoking list that I can consult on a day that is dragging its heels through the cow pies. And I went to the market today and it is the day before Diwali, one of India’s biggest festivals, and it was CRAZY.

(I can’t remember if I told you about the time, just before we left the Himalayas, when we were all skipping down to Chinua’s concert with the Turbans, and Leafy came running back up the trail crying, with a face that was black with something gooey.  “Did you fall in mud?” I asked, as he was approaching.  “No, it wasn’t muuudddd!” he wailed.  And then he was surprisingly calm and cheery, while I was very grossed out (as well as impressed by his skillz), because he had tripped and and fallen in perfect alignment with a Leafy-face-sized fresh cow pie. It was a soft landing, there was that you could say for it.)

I liked the discussion in the comments. Dinah Soar talked about what a difference surviving cancer made in her thoughts about regular chores, and how willfully changing her thought patterns helps her love even the most mundane things.  And Sheryl talked about being the Crocodile Hunter, and Tj talked about transforming her thoughts

“to realize that “God is my home”. All that deep longing I sometimes have that I want to be home, even if I am at home, is really my longing for God,”

which is beautiful and oh-so-wise.

There are things that will hold us back from being playful.

*Worry.

*The idea that we aren’t allowed to enjoy what we do.

*Self consciousness.  There is something very beautiful about sitting and watching the play of very young children, who pay no attention to anything but the thing they are focused on. And right now, there is a man just outside my house, taking a bucket bath at the well, STARKERS. He is not self conscious.  Let us all take him as our example.

One way I’ve learned to deal with self consciousness is to pay more attention to what I am seeing than what people are thinking of me.  It helps, especially being a foreigner in a staring country.  I don’t care what people are thinking of me, because look at the pretty colors! And are those lemon cucumbers?

*Lack of imagination.

*Lack of wonder.

And again, it all comes back to being like children. My children don’t lack imagination, wonder, are only a little self-conscious, and don’t worry all that much. They definitely have no problem with enjoying themselves. Thoroughly.

I think I have come to a place where I am very capable at rolling up my sleeves and getting down to business. I no longer cringe at my time being thrown around like whitewash, and I do love the creative work of raising a family. But I get the super mom label all too often, the “You’re a Hero” words more than I like, because the super mom image creates distance and throws up an instant fence. (I’m not talking about internet space, here, but with the women I meet in my travels.)

And I do reach for my work hard guns all too often. So I want to tear those banners down and be the child that is loved and whole and not perfect. Loved. Whole. (Though broken, what a paradox.) Not perfect.

Full of wonder. Not wondering if anyone is noticing how hard I am working.

There is so much work to be done, especially in a family of six.  It almost never stops. When one load of laundry is taken off the line, another is ready to go on. When one meal is cleaned up, it’s almost time to begin the next. Sometimes we work very hard for leisure, also (as any mama knows who has gone camping).

A woman can work very hard. She can organize and make lists, and she can tidy and straighten and wash and reorganize and dunk her baby in a bath and dress him and put him to bed.

But not all of a woman is made to work. The soul of a woman contains so much more- there is a girl-child inside, ready to play!  Sometimes the girl-child is upset, because there has been no time to play, no time to laze around and read on a window seat on a rainy day.

But there is work to do. So, there must be a way to bring the two together! Surely God did not make us to forget how to be children (Jesus suggested the very opposite when He said, “Unless you become like children, you will not see the Kingdom of God”) and surely He is not a great taskmaster, always hovering and waiting for us to account for ourselves.

My dear friend in Varanasi said to me, when we talking of this very thing, of making pots and pots of chai and running around and serving and hosting, “But what about the Girl inside?!”  Other people may forget the girl-child, but I don’t think we should forget her.  And if you are a man, you should not forget your boy-child. Actually, this is one of my favorite things about my husband. The small boy that he was is always lingering just below the surface, so close that sometimes they are one and the same. Sometimes that boy bursts through (often!) and rolls on the floor laughing or picks up a sword to play with the kids. I want to be like this.

And yet, the children who are children both on the inside and the outside, they need to eat!

So. I am making a list of ways to play while I work. Tomorrow I will show you my list.  I think I will illustrate it and put it somewhere in my house, somewhere I will not forget it. It is necessary, for my survival, as a woman, a girl-child, and a seeker of the Kingdom of God.

The first thing we noticed was the heat, which wrapped around us lovingly in a thick wet hug.  Without much rain, this monsoon season has been almost unbearable, with everyone watching the skies for some cooling precipitation.

The next thing I noticed was the stuff everywhere!  Living on the mountainside like we have been makes a visit to the capital a jaw dropping experience.  And then I noticed that our boogers were already turning black.

It has improved here, though, over the years, since they instituted green fuel technology in the auto rickshaws and buses.  The auto rickshaws themselves are like small yellow and green beetles, swarming by the hundreds, overtaking and passing the larger, more sluggish automobiles on the road.  Some of the vehicles are ridiculous, in already tight spaces, giant SUV’s make driving almost impossible.

Then there are the people, the millions of them. The row of men napping on their bicycle rickshaws on the side of the road, cracked heels dangling off the vinyled edges of the seats.  The acrobat children who flip on the sides of the roads to get us to look and them, wanting money for their child labor efforts.  The colorful saris, the dupattas and scarves everywhere.

Sometimes in culture-colliding moments, I feel the world tilt like I have a severe case of vertigo.  Such was the case today at the U.S. Embassy, when I sat in the waiting room and watched the woman with the freckles dispense advice and forms with a Mid-Western accent, her comfortably padded figure an ideal of smiles and friendliness.  The room slid dangerously from left to right, the chairs all stacking up on one another with my strong sense of dislocation.  Where were we?  Technically America, but in the center of our India.

Now I have broken away for a moment, jubilant with the success of our passport mission, knowing that Solo’s passport will be in our hands in two weeks, with a train ticket for tomorrow night in hand, hardwon by Chinua.  I’m running around to do some shopping, finding myself in Khan market, another culture collision, where there are stores I can’t find elsewhere.  It’s a strange place, guarded by security companies to keep touts and beggars out, which makes it a simple shopping experience, but a little uncomfortable, since everyone seems to be so much cleaner and wealthier than I am.  Should I be here?  Or should the security guard stop me at the entrance?

It is much like the embassy today, where I wiped my baby’s head, damp with sweat, and considered our flowy and sun-faded clothing, comparing our dirty, cheerful selves with the pressed clothing of the other inhabitants of the waiting room.  The damp curls on the sides of YaYa’s face trickled sweat down her cheeks and I wondered how the others had managed to arrive at the embassy perspiration-free.  Possibly they jumped from air-conditioned car to air-conditioned waiting room, rather than piling into an auto rickshaw like the six of us.

I can’t imagine a mall in the West where some people are kept out and others are let in.  On the other hand, there are strict No Soliciting signs on the doors, which would definitely prevent the men who trail me for blocks, demanding that I pay attention to their handkerchiefs or towels or chess sets.  (I particularly love the way the chess wallas react to my “no”, offering hopefully, “Backgammon?”, as though I possibly detest chess but am an avid backgammon player.)

Have I idealized the West?  Or is it true that a working child would not be allowed to turn flips on her face on the dirt on the side of the road?  It’s hard not to blame the government here. And then there is the woman we met so many years ago, a beggar with a baby who called out “Chinua!” as we walked down the street, marveling at our four children, none of whom we had, the ten years ago that we spent each day sharing a meal with her.

It’s a homecoming in a way, this Main Bazaar in Paharganj, the backpacker’s ghetto.  I spot the guest houses where I hid away, my teenaged self in utter shock at the way the world had been ticking away in the dirt so far from me in my clean Canadian cul-de-sac.  The beggar woman looks amazing, clean and healthy, barely any older, walking home with us to make sure that Chinua will take her out for a meal.  I consider this woman, young, with a home, with English skills better than most people I meet in India.  She is so friendly and lovely that she must have a different opportunity somewhere else.  But maybe the begging life is addictive.  I mean, she’s famous around the world, in a way.

Everything here has something that contradicts it.  With a mind like mine, always in overdrive, it is difficult to be at rest.  No matter where I go, there are questions and answers, and there are contradicting answers.  Now I will go and find Kid A a birthday present (ahead of time) in a mall where I am an outsider, just a hippie in a well-dressed throng, trying to find something that will not break in a day. I am both wealthy and not, and very aware of both.

If you’ve ever sat on your unmade bed slumped into a shape like a letter ‘C’, if you’ve ever hit your foot on the bottom of a chair and messed up your toenail polish, if you’ve ever spoken sharply to your kids and then found out that they were innocent, if you’ve ever run out of money, run out of time, run out of patience…

If you’ve ever been too hot, forgotten to drink enough water, stopped exercising for a year…  If you’ve ever put your head down on a concrete floor and given up, only to peel yourself up and continue washing dishes a few minutes later, if you’ve ever been late for dinner or paying a bill, if you’ve ever sighed overly loudly and then been caught peeking to see if anyone noticed…

If you’ve ever been so bored your teeth hurt, if you’ve ever looked at the days before you with dismay, if you’ve ever looked at your face in the mirror with dismay, if you’ve ever made a bad hair decision, if you’ve ever bumped your head really hard and then cussed and then felt bad because you just happened to be on camera, if you’ve ever blamed people just to make yourself feel better, if you’ve ever been a blamosaurus rex…

If you’ve ever had a cough for days and days and days, if you’ve ever broken a tooth on popcorn, if anyone has ever found glass in your food, if you’ve ever looked at crafting blogs and despaired, if you’ve ever woken up and realized that you are pretty sure that you are totally mediocre,

well, the following story is for you.

Once upon a time there was a girl who lived in India, and she was a girl, but she was also a mother, which means that if she was having a bad day she wasn’t allowed to lock her bedroom door and refuse to come out.  (It’s just kind of one of the rules, if you’re a girl and a mom.  Also if you’re just a mom.)

So this girl who was a mom was having water problems at her house again, and she had a couple of wise friends who had spent a lot of time in the mysterious land of India.  These friends told her, “If you want to get anything done, you have to get mad!”  The girl wasn’t at all sure that she could be angry to someone, but she thought she’d give it a shot.  So she called her landlord, (again) and she said, “Listen, I just can’t live this way anymore.  I’m spending all my money to send my laundry out, I can’t cook, we can’t bathe.  This is ridiculous!”

She didn’t sound angry, but she did succeed in appearing rather pathetic.  And she learned from the landlord that all had been done that could be done, and nothing more could be solved with the water crisis until the monsoon.  They would just have a little bit of water, each and every day.

And this is what happened to the girl: she pulled one sleeve until it turned inside out, and the other sleeve until it just tore right off her shirt, and then she hopped on one foot in a circle, and then she turned red and then she just began to weep.  The water thing was taking too many thoughts, and the thoughts became bumpy, and the thoughts were not smooth, the way she liked her thoughts to be.  And the children had grown fangs.

So she cried.  She sat down on the floor and cried and cried, and soon all the things that were sad but that she hadn’t cried about (because she was a girl AND a mom) were filling up her head and demanding that tears be dedicated to them too.  And then the neighbors began to line up and write small things on pieces of paper, things that needed to be cried about, and then the internets joined in, and the girl who was a mom wept until her tears formed their own clouds and a great storm came.  The great storm turned into a great monsoon and after a few days, the water came rushing into all the tanks in the village.

All the villagers were very happy, plus they’d had their sad things cried over, and so they bought the girl who was a mom a bathtub of her very own, so she could soak her old feet in it and then rub some nice smelling lotion into them.

And it was all because the girl who was a mom had let herself cry. (There’s no rule against it!)

The End

I’ve been having some trouble treasuring my life.  (And some trouble feeling treasured.)

The days stretch and there are teeth forcing their way slowly through my youngest son’s gums.  He is not sleeping, and neither am I.  (Are you sure that I am loved?)

I hold him a lot.  And then I snap at people.  And then I cringe. (I don’t feel lovable.)

But there are glimmers. (Do you love me, Maker?)

Love glimmers, like tonight when my back was aching and I lay on the cool concrete floor and all three of the older kids lined up and lay with their heads on my belly, like a group of kittens.  YaYa stroked my face and told me, “I haven’t seen you cry in a long time.” (The answer comes: A very loud YES!)

“When was the last time you saw me cry?” I ask.  No one can remember.  “I think sometime in America when you and Daddy were talking and you were sad,” someone says.  They are wrong.  They saw me cry in Goa, when we arrived.  When we were there, this place that I am in now, comfortable here and in a house and out in the sun, in the breeze, on a rooftop, this place would have seemed like paradise.  Why am I so dry and stubborn, adjusting to good things and finding something new to complain about?  (Life King, are you sure that you love me? Because I know that I love you, that I would curl myself up next to your breastbone if only I could, that I love the things you make and I would run off of a hillside with lemmings, I would breathe under water, I would stampede, I would fly, I would become the peak of a mountain, just for the joy of it.)

There are other glimmers. Tonight we ate baby ferns that our neighbor brought us from the shady glades of the forests near the waterfall. Becca watched everyone this morning so that I could sleep.  Math is going well, we are all healthy, and I gave Tripta some of the eggplants.  In turn, she gave me some potatoes from her garden.  (Yes, again, an ‘I love you’ but not a shrill yes.)

It’s better if I sit down and paint.  It’s better if I am singing my way through the day.  It’s better if I am getting some sleep.  It’s better if I am not thinking too hard about all that I should be.  (Not an exasperated yes, either, like ‘Yes, already. Jeez.’)

Here’s a comedic glimmer.  More than a glimmer, a flash of light like someone on the opposite hilltop has lifted their glass of water in the sunlight, to take a sip.

Yesterday we were walking home, and Leafy was running on ahead.  Lately he’s been doing what Becca calls the Forrest Gump version of running: we set out, and he starts running and just keeps on RUN-NING.  He’s almost always within sight, and we are usually on a straight path around the hillside when he’s doing this.  But yesterday we had to take a left, to go up the hill, and he kept on to the right and down.  Kid A and YaYa got a whiff of this, and they took off after him, while Becca and I calmly plodded along, unaware of the drama ensuing.  I saw them disappear around a curve and said, “Hey kids!  You’re going the wrong way!”

They yelled back that they were bringing Leafy home. Becca went to go see what was up, and I loitered on the path with Solo, giving lame little waves to people who climbed past me.  When we were finally all together, I heard the story.  Leafy had just kept on running down the stone path, with YaYa and Kid A in frantic pursuit, YaYa calling out to hikers who were headed in the opposite direction: “Please help us catch him!”  By the time they all caught up, he was resting on a rock, and they were practically all the way down the hill.

It was pretty funny.  He then turned around and ran up the hill, to our house.  I don’t know what’s up with this running thing, but it is a glimmer.

There are many glimmers, and I am trying to treasure these days, minutes, hours.  I am tired, but with my pencil held weakly in one hand I am sketching something for us all to remember when we are older.  Making chapatti in the kitchen, playing cards, sitting on a blanket with knitting and pencils and a rubber dinosaur.  Lots of baby kisses.

(Not shrill, not exasperated, but more like a humming, a thrumming, a whirring, like the wing beats of a thousand birds.  They all shout yes yes!  You are loved you are loved!  The earth beneath your feet is humming with it, whispering: Beloved.  Lay your head down. Let it swell up and over you.  Be loved.  This is the biggest truth, the greatest truth:  The Maker, The Life King, He loves you.

Climb into it.  Don’t hide cringing in the corner, walk out and let it find you.  The days are like a long line ahead of you and in them is the capacity for a great stomping, chummy, heart-easing, devastating love that you must open yourself up to. It is your life work.)

When I was younger, I was often afraid. I was afraid to be honest, because if I opened up the can and let people see that I was real, that I was struggling, someone would come along and stand back with their arms crossed over their chest: You’ve obviously got more than you can handle there, Rae. Maybe you’re not the one for this job.

When I started this blog, it was a step into honesty for me. And while I didn’t at first give my blog address to my closest friends, those in my community, it gradually became something that is read by many, many people who know me. All of those people have been vastly supportive of my honesty, even blessed by it, something which had repudiated those old fears. I learned a new lesson: you can share and people will love you even a little bit more, because they know that they are not alone.

So it almost made me laugh, the other day, when I received this comment to this post.

I seriously think that you all are not doing anyone any good by living where you are. Honestly, I believe that you all would be much happier living elsewhere and therefore, be more productive in everything that you are wanting to achieve personally and in realizing your shared goals. You need suffer your existance. . . you and your family could be so much more productive elsewhere. Best of luck in all your endeavors. Stay well.

Wow, right? It was a throwback to those old fears.

I don’t know who the commenter is, and to me, it seems that the things that I choose to reveal on this site are not enough information to go on to form an opinion about where on this earth I should live. But the comment really got me thinking.

The thing is, you can go back in my archives (and beware, because there are buggies out there that I really need to fix, leftovers from a previous botched wordpress update that put strange symbols in my sentences) and read about sad things. You can also read about glad things. And the same goes for now: Sad things. Glad things. In fact, I’d say that my battle with Post Partum Depression is milder with Solo than it has been with any of my kids, and that is HUGE. Huge.

So, I wouldn’t say that I’m less happy than I’ve been in other places.

I think that when you do challenging things, you make a trade. You trade one thing for another, and you may trade something like convenience or the public library for color and the rustle of coconut trees. Or deep times with friends over coffee for voices in many languages. But the circumstances that you have found yourself in cannot define who you are.

Everyone has to decide what they will spend their life looking for. I learned a few years back that happiness is a shifty creature. Happiness is not easily found, or when found, is as elusive as a jellyfish. You can’t hold onto it. My emotions are all over the place, folks. Blame it on artistic temperament, genes, or maybe I’m just sulky, but I know that I cannot count on feeling a certain way for any length of time. Happiness. It’s something that happens to you and then whoops! There it goes.

No, I can’t follow after that. My life must take a more intentional path.

My tagline (which will be up again as soon as I get my banner up) is Cultivating Joy. We all have many things that we can cultivate, things that don’t happen to us, but that we go out and water everyday, things that wrap their little shoots around their neighbors and need to be staked and cared for and checked for bugs. Like joy. Like love, thankfulness, kindness, honesty, choosing not to be offended, choosing to see the best in others, refraining from ill wishes or gossip.

What I mean is that I wouldn’t use the word happy to define my life. Neither would I say that I am more productive when I am happy. I know that I am the most productive when I embrace and fully receive the truth of the unfailing love of God who made me. (Because when I do, I am not telling myself the evil mantra: you’re no good, it’s your fault, you will fail, and I can shut those voices out and just have fun making stuff and loving people.) I know that the words that define my life are loved, blessed, supported, sure, steady, secure, at peace, content, broken, thankful, hopeful and waiting. There are probably many more.

So then, the question of where we live? There are many things that are hard. Language barriers can be hard, especially when I would like to get to know someone a little bit more, but find that I can’t because we can only speak to each other as children do. Dust can be hard, but in a silly way. Like pine needles can be hard. Being away from family and dear friends is very hard. The poverty in India and trying to figure out what to do about it is hard.

But there are things that wow! stun me. Like the Iranian friends who showed up on my porch yesterday, friends we had met in Turkey. Now, here in India, we can have them over for our meditation time and lunch together. Fazeah, the woman, wants to make lunch for us on Saturday. And let me tell you, Persian food is GOOD. So it’s beautiful for my stomach, too. Or meeting a friend from San Francisco who owned the restaurant downstairs from us and now happens to be staying in the very same village that we are in. This international community is what we moved here for. As well as our community and our meditation space, which is budding like the lime tree in my yard is budding.

Then there are the kids, growing and learning and so happy and trying my patience. Like they’d be anywhere. They can find Turkey and Israel and India on an unmarked map, as well as Canada and the States, so geography is big on the learning front. And normal things, like knowing the guys at my vegetable stall, or swimming, or the lovely cows everywhere, or the herd of goats which runs through our village twice a day.

And my book, which is coming along. And Chinua’s photography of the lovely Banjara people.

I am not only blessed, I am happy. At least, some of the time. So I think we’ll stay.

She still doesn’t have the Christmas thing together at all. Year after year, it’s messed up.

I think she’s doing a pretty good job, really, all things considered.

A good job of what? She hasn’t prepared anything.

Well, how would you do, trying to prepare for a holiday when you’re in a new country and you don’t even know where to get the things you need?

It’s not really just that, though. Have you noticed how she’s dropping all the balls? The thin strands that she grasps to hold her relationships together, the emails going unreplied, the way she knows the phone calls that she should be making– but still doesn’t make them.

Is unreplied even a word?

You know what I mean. Don’t pretend you haven’t seen it. She doesn’t send photos out, she hasn’t done Christmas cards this year. She’s just irresponsible. I saw dirt in her baby’s ear the other day.

She’s so young, though.

Not that young. Wasn’t she supposed to publish a book by twenty-five? HA! How’s that going for her?

Wasn’t that your stupid idea? You told her that youth was some sort of competition. She’s too smart for that now. She knows about the body of work that she will gradually add to, all of her life. There is no need to be a prodigy, no need for fame. Just page after page, added to a pile, like leaves in an old book, crumbling slightly because they’ve been read over so many precious times.

It’s a pretty small pile, at this point.

But zoom out, and all of her children are part of her body of work, and zoom out again, and all of those relationships (which are not held together by anything as flimsy as threads, regardless of what you mistakenly believe) are part of the body of work, and then come back even farther and you can see that every dish washed clean in a late night sink, every old smile held on by sheer willpower, all of these are a part of a majestic body of work. By the time she dies it will be higher than the tallest trees.

But she can never keep up! All of those late night dishes are in danger of falling over and crushing her, and her laundry is never clean and there are all of those emails that go unanswered. She knows that she needs to do these things, but she’s always failing, she’s always so far behind. I saw her lying in bed this morning, when she knew she should get up and start working.

She was watching the wind move the trees.

She knew she should get up, though.

Yes, but isn’t there a lot more to life than your to-do lists? You always talk about owing– she owes a lot more than work. She owes delight, she owes noticing, she owes attention and laughter and listening to that rustling of the wind in the coconut trees and sitting on the floor memorizing the faces of her children.

I’ve lost you.

That’s because you’re losing her. She won’t let you mess with her forever.  She won’t listen to you anymore. She’d rather watch the wind.

Poor you. Sometimes I get stuck, and I have to write about things until I get unstuck, and that can take awhile.

It’s probably the adjustment to having another child. Or maybe it’s the fact that some of our wild stompings have settled down and we’re moving into a chaotic kind of routine, more of the shape of what our life will be here.

Or maybe it’s my poor neglected novel and ungerminated other ideas, gathering dust at the base of my skull, longing for water and sunlight.

Whatever it is, I’ve been thinking about a certain kind of lifestyle.

It’s my pretend world. It’s pretty simple. I’m not really one for clothes or parties or shoes. I don’t like standing on stage. I could go without watching any more movies in the theater without much regret. I like concerts, but can live without them.

But this is what a day in my pretend world would look like:

I would wake up with the sun of course, after a deep and refreshing sleep. I’d make myself tea or coffee, and make some for someone else, too. I’d wander out to some outdoor spot and pray. Then I’d start to write. When I got stumped for the next sentence, I’d pick up my knitting and think for awhile as I threw down some rows, then continue until I had my work done for the day. I’d paint in the afternoons. I’d cook or garden, edit my writing, and then read great and beautiful books with whatever time I had left.

Evening would be soft and purple. Maybe there would be sunsets to watch, maybe there would be firelight and singing.

It’s not that my children wouldn’t be in my pretend world. They’d be harmoniously working amongst themselves, singing and creating and taking such good care of their things.

They wouldn’t be peeing on the floor. Or destroying an entire pack of clothespins that I just bought. Or fighting.

Okay, so life is a little bit different in the real world than in the Pretend World. There is coffee, also tea, but they are often cold before I get to them. I read guiltily when I really should be doing other things. I knit a row and then set my project down. My book is very, very neglected.

But here it is! This is the life I have been given, God came over to me and placed it gently into my hands and now I’m supposed to do something with it. And now that I have it, it’s the one I want, really and truly. But how?

Kids are not seamless. They are not convenient, they are not quiet. They are not always harmonious. They are often not careful.

What they are is boisterous! Joyful, loving, genuine, hilarious, sweet, adorable, hungry, moody and engaging. I need to find a way to access the bits of me that can work with these traits. I need to find my fun side.

Of course, as always, God knows what we need. Because I am incredibly selfish. Not with stuff, usually, not with money (usually) but with my time. It’s mine it’s mine it’s MINE!

And no, it’s not. And because I am still a child, too, I will learn these lessons even as I teach them to my children, giving up my way for someone else’s, making my boundaries and then relaxing them. Being kind. Being more of an US than a ME. Asking the only important questions: What open road is before us today? Who will we meet? How will we love? (Not: What will my word count be?)