Just Write {60}

I had been away from Thursday to Sunday and it felt terribly long this time. Too many hours were strung together without the sights and smells and really-loud-sounds of home.

I told the attendees of BBC Chicago that the chaos of my life breeds my creativity. I stood behind a podium and told my story. I said that without my family, the daily grind, the work of life, I would not write. I would not create. My life and all of its messes, it is the reason I am inspired to allow something artful to flow from me when I can.

So on this night I tucked them in and then I climbed up the bunk bed ladder and lay down with Asher. I held the book out in front of him so he could see the occasional pictures. Miles ended up coming up the ladder and climbing in with us. It’s only fair. It always has to be fair. I stopped between words to smell their freshly washed hair and to try to make it stop sticking up from going dry while being pillow-pressed. It wasn’t working but I have to keep trying for some odd reason. By morning, it will be a nest and it will make me laugh.

They asked questions and waited through all the paragraphs in the chapter book for the next picture. I can’t believe we’re here, I thought. To books with few pictures, a bunk bed and a sleeping baby sister. To a little tiny bit more sleep for mommy and daddy but not less exhaustion.

Hold on. Stay right here.

I like to stop reading just exactly when it’s hard to stop reading. What’s about to happen? We don’t know. We have to wait until tomorrow to find out. Their faces fill with What could it be? and it makes me glad because it’s so easy for us to find out the endings or keep moving through, these days. We can fast forward commercials, watch an entire series of a show in one weekend and movies go from the screen to our homes in a shorter and shorter amount of time. Our cup of coffee is made in thirty seconds and we don’t have to write checks and we push a button to get money from a machine. We are getting everything we want as instantaneously as possible and I miss suspense. Like a new friend said at the conference, I remember when  you had to wait to find out who shot JR.

I miss that. And this weekend I missed my family a lot and that was even better. Sometimes, it’s good to miss them and then come back to home and them and the life they give me that offers me a place to start being fully me; wholly me. Having kids doesn’t take you away in every way, I think. You don’t have to lose yourself. You’re sometimes on hold, in some ways, until the next episode, but mostly you’re always just getting started.

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This is the 59th installment of Just Write, an exercise in free writing your ordinary and extraordinary moments. {Please see the details here.} I would love to read your freely written words so join me and link up below. You can add the url of your post at any time. Just be sure it’s a link to your Just Write post, not to your main page, and please don’t link to posts that are not written in the spirit of capturing moments–like lists or sponsored posts. Then please link back to this post in your post so people know where to go if they’d like to join in. (Any links not following those two guidelines will be deleted.)

Also. Please take a moment to visit someone else who has linked up! It’s a really good way to meet new writers and get inspired by the meaning behind their moments. Word? Thank you!