Every day should begin and end with a mother’s kiss. Should. These days when they are not here, my mother self is starved, floating outside of me, the hours empty of them. I fit no place but nowhere that’s how it feels. So on those days when I can only give them a good morning and goodnight prayer, I hope they feel it. I know I feel it. So many years ago there was a garbage dump, in Ecuador and when we pulled up out came droves of kids from the garbage heaps for bread. We gave what we had until it was gone and it wasn’t enough. A child should greet each day with a mother’s kiss and then have her kiss at night. A warm safe place, so much bread, at least one home. Mine have two. They come to me and we hammer away all senses go full throttle all […]
Maybe meditation is best done in longer periods of time than 1-2 minutes, but honestly, it’s all I’ve got. And usually, it’s more like 30 seconds or less. Deep breaths. Deep breaths followed by a moment or two of reminding myself to not focus on negative things, like having bats that don’t want to hibernate but would rather fly around my living room. And then I suppose reminding myself to not focus on these things is actually a way to focus on these things. heh. What is this thing I MUST do, in the telling? I HAVE BATS, I can’t stop saying it. Like telling enough people will POOF, make them go away. I suppose this is part of why we repeat all of our hard things. Underneath, maybe it feels like it will take them away…I don’t know. Habits are hard to break. How are you? Oh, fine. My car wouldn’t start. […]
This was the kind of snow that sticks to your shovel and your boots and all around the bottom of your jeans. And you can stomp stomp stomp but it’s not going anywhere. It’s just packing itself on thicker. I would slide the shovel, scrape and scoop and then lift, my arms hurting. And then I’d try to throw the snow. Most of it stayed on the shovel, so stuck. Yeah, yeah, this was a metaphor to me, but what isn’t, really? Metaphor: The Over-Thinky Person’s Crutch. I can’t help it, the heaviness of the snow is just too easy of a metaphor target, so there I was, letting it hit me like a good metaphor should. I got mad at it, you know? Like most people do, at snow and wind combined. The way they refuse to stop blowing into the very place you’ve just cleaned. And getting mad and shoveling harder […]
Everyone had the look of sleep-deprivation. Dark circles and an accidental or on-purpose perma-frown. We all have eyes that glisten with the soft glow of just waking up, even if we’ve been up for hours. We got to set our clocks back. Our bodies are confused about this. I ran into a friend at Goodwill and she said she normally wakes up at six, like clock work, pun intended. And now she wakes up at five. Or that is what the clock says anyway, and so the day is just so long. It’s darker and longer. Winter’s slow and then fast arrival feels foreboding, and I told another friend that it settles in on me, and I have no choice but to keep thinking of spring. Sara Groves says “hope stands in defiance” and I like that because I like to think of hope standing there with hands on hips, and maybe I’m […]
There’s someone who decorated for Halloween by dressing up a home-made, ginormous, stuffed pillow-case-like doll. They put a shirt on it…her? Him?…and then they put underwear on it, but the unders are pulled down to about thigh length and this doll is sitting on a toilet, its jeans around its ankles. Yes, this toilet is out in the yard. Yes, this doll is on the toilet. Yes, this doll has underwear pulled down. No, I don’t know what this has to do with Halloween. Yes, I find it hard to not be disturbed every single time I drive by going to and from home. To each their own toilet decorations… I would take a picture and put it in this post, but I just can’t bring myself to do it. It’s tempting, but also, it’s just too….weird. I like how my friend Christa decorated for Halloween. She put a string of orange lights […]
I looked up at the stars tonight, on a perfectly clear fall evening. Every constellation looks like a Dipper to me. Little or Big Dipper, I don’t know. I get distracted before I even take a closer look. I see all the stars at once. In college, I took Astronomy. Obviously, I didn’t learn much, or retained very little of it. But there I stood, my neck bent with my face to the salt and peppered sky. For October in Minnesota, it has been warm, gorgeous. Not easy to describe at all. The last two days have been still and bright and crisp, with that nothing-like-it autumn smell in the air. There was a walk in the woods the other day. Up a hill and to a fallen tree. There were pricklies on my sweater and stuck to my jeans. Some even got in my pocket. I pulled at them and then realized […]
This is the back corner of the coffee shop where I love to write. Jenna is coming soon. There is nothing like a friend who has known you since you were five. While I put the creamer in my dark roast, up front, a “Hi, Heather” came from behind me. I turned to see a high school teacher of mine, from all those years ago. I have no idea how so many of these people around this small hometown look the same. Hardly aged. Does Minnesota country air do something good for those that choose a healthy lifestyle? I’m pretty sure there’s something to that. Yesterday was a hard day. I don’t know, there’s just a lot of stress. And I stopped at Goodwill to look for more vintage for the walls at the Cre8tive Escape because our Grand Opening is this Thursday and oh yeah, no we’re totally not ready. Like that […]
There was a cookies-n-cream fluffy pie with chocolate cookie crumble crust tucked behind things in the fridge. The boys found it, of course, and asked to have some. I told them from the other room to each have ONE small piece, and they did. Well, they were actually really big pieces. What was left was a “piece” of pie so small, it was less than Elsie Sized. She didn’t know yet, but I left it on the counter until she noticed, because what child never notices a pie tin at eye level? What’s that!? She ask-yelled. Oh that? I said. That, is what’s left of the pie after Brothers got a hold of it. Then I grabbed a fork and I sat down right there on the kitchen floor. She came over quick, down to her knees halfway to me, scooting along full-force. I met her with the fork in the air, and […]
They can teleport, they say. And every imaginary moment is voiced, narrated, more than actually played out. Now this is when I walk in and I get so mad that my eyes are flaming… no, no…first you actually have to tell me which way it’s coming. okay, that way. Start there. I have no idea which way you’re pointing, stop spinning in circles! So we teleport while spinning! It changes as it changes, saving face, winning at making up the rules. They’ll do this the rest of their lives, they just don’t know that they are practicing. They call each other on doing it “wrong” and they decide for the others their moments of demise. The smallest ones are quiet followers. They sit on the front steps of the big old blue house across the street and watch the bigger kids still deciding how things work. This is a dead end street, so […]
I saw in his face what something in me already knew. He was tired from staying up too late and drinking more than he planned to drink. He was tired from thinking and thinking again and thinking about his drinking again. They were both tired, he and his wife, from years of building things and watching them crumble, building them back up again. That’s life, that’s parenting, that’s marriage, that’s work. But there was More, the mysterious illness of a child. And we who are prone to drink, genes broken up and begging for More, we will drink More. That’s what we do. Until we don’t. So there we stood, not going to church but meeting in a church, and we recognized our matching sickness because of a hesitant willingness to see it. He finally said it out loud. All the wonderings of self, the fears and the unknowns that are truly known […]
I did not look at my email even one time yesterday. It was a Monday and a perfectly beautiful day, and I worked at The Middle Fork and you guys should have seen it. All the tables were full and people were waiting in the entry and thank the good Lord that one of the owners was there to man the cash register and make fancy lattes and such. My feet hurt. I love it when that place is busy. Except I say really random things to the people at the tables sometimes because I’m trying to remember so many things at once and move faster than I can. And my weird humor up and jumps right out when I’m overwhelmed, so there you have it. For instance, this one time, some people were trying to get a high chair to fit behind their table, in a corner, lifting it up and over. […]
I walked home in the dark, along the sidewalk, past the pond and in the stillness. It was such a beautiful night for a head-clearing walk. Sweatshirt weather. This small town quiet is a good match for sweatshirt weather. Only one car passed by, the whole time I walked, and people had their windows open to their settled-in houses. I could feel the breeze in their rooms, like we were sharing something. My phone rang as I rounded the corner to home. A friend calling to break bad news, to ask for prayers for a family. Just like that, the father and husband was gone. In his sleep. Just like that, a man around my age, gone. No breathing, no heartbeat, as if he were only a breath himself. You just never know, she said. Yes, I’m so sorry. And you don’t. You don’t know. I don’t know. There are far too many […]
There is a kind of tired that feels so good while it also hurts to not be able to move your arms without hating painting. The kind that comes after hard work, together. After finishing something, or working your way (slowly) toward finishing. It’s hard to keep going and everything is screaming that I’m OLD, but it’s worth it. Like childbirth. Only not.that.painful. We are painting and painting at the Cre8tive Escape building, getting ready for our first creator’s retreat in the ginormous room downstairs next weekend. NEXT WEEKEND. We have had helpers, people who care about us and come to roll on paint or scrape the old carpet glue off the cement floor. We pay them with….love. (How nice and generous, huh?) I thought you might want to see what the ginormous room looked like before: Ironically, the words on the wall from the previous renters of the downstairs space say […]
It was a stifling kind of humid this weekend and then just like that, it lifted. That’s Minnesota. It’s a “just like that” kind of place. This morning it’s so chilly I’m glad I closed the windows last night. I sit here now with slippers on. The air around me smacks of autumn, and so do all the back to school Facebook posts of yesterday. We still have this one week before the call of the fall schedule. This one week, to shift gears, let go, and start again. Sometimes people say, We’re ready! and I think they mean they have all their school supplies and the clothes that fit the season and the growing children. If they mean they are mentally and emotionally prepared, they need to be teaching the rest of us. I haven’t met a mother (or any guardian of a child’s life and heart) that feels ready for such […]
They were wiped out, and so was their mother (that’s me!) but we were keepin’ on keepin’ on. That’s how we roll. And it is in the midst of all of the busy-ness and ugh and whining and arguing and trying and failing and keepin’ on, that we find the most moments of joy. No, not in the times when we try to make it arise, like planning a special trip or event. I mean, that’s fun too, but joy seems to prefer the daily grind and sometimes it is hiding behind the ordinary and can only be found if you keep going around the next bend. For us it was popping up in the middle of this: I came home from work. I had been at the Middle Fork Cafe, with the entire place full and just one me, until serving help came. Phew. The kids had a sitter and had so […]
The screen door would slam, bang! and then it would clap bang, bang, bang, bang, four more times, softer and softer, before resting behind him. He was heading out for chicken chores, gathering eggs and feeding the flock. Then he’d come back. BANG, bang bang bang…bang… He would wash the eggs and make himself some, set the rest to dry. He would come to the living room, wake the grand kids on the hide-a-bed with a kiss and a hug and a too-hard pat on the cheek. It was more like a slap but they never told him it hurt a little. There was so much love behind it, this boy and girl knew that he meant no harm. A bursting love sometimes causes a heavy hand accidentally. GOOD MORNING!! He would eat and listen to AM radio and then back out the door for more chores he would go, with less […]
I told her there are two kinds of people. Those that stick around when your life makes them uncomfortable, and those that don’t. The ones that draw back, pull away, go quiet…they don’t intend to cause pain. Maybe they just shut down, get scared and freeze. It feels like it is you that makes them uncomfortable and maybe it is, but what can you do? I have friends that don’t stop showing up whether they know what to say or do or not. They know my life is full of weeds right now and they keep coming along, grabbing close to the dirt and pulling with all their might until they fall backward, a big milkweed in hand, roots splaying out all over their dirty faces. Then they laugh and that makes me laugh and we point at each other. Or something like that. The pulling at weeds/not giving up analogy is about […]
I was trying to describe unconditional love with an analogy. So I compared loving a person to loving a favorite book, and it went something like this (I will paraphrase and elaborate, I’m sure.): It’s as if you’re sitting with that book you love so much, and you say, I love everything about this book. Its cover, its story, its words and lines and pages. And I flip through the book and I devour it and marvel at its colors and lines, its magic. And then I come to a page that’s torn nearly off. The paper dangles by a few fibers and I’m all, uh oh. I could say, Oh look at that, it isn’t right. Not good. Not perfect. No way. I could toss the book aside, done. That page might fall out. That page makes it hard to read. That page is ugly. Of course a book can’t tape itself […]
We can talk for hours and still have few answers since some answers are impossible to uncover. But it’s still good to talk it over, to feel the comfort of an I don’t know, and a Me either. In the middle of all the change and growth, the pain and grief, there is more than enough I don’t know. There are days to be stuck in that and days to let it go. Being stuck doesn’t mean staying stuck. We change despite ourselves, especially if we are well loved. And aren’t we always, if we’re really paying attention? If you can’t always feel something, it doesn’t mean it isn’t there. If it goes unsaid for a time, it is only unsaid, not gone. There is someone near me who needs help, I’m going to go give it. Can you feel that? The way it heals to move from Self to service? It is […]
In small towns the retired men come to diners or coffee shops every single day, at the same time. If someone misses a day, the conversation is about what they might be doing. And today they’re talking a lot about the ceaseless rain, how high the dam water is, how the lakes are up to the point where docks are drowning. They’ve never seen it like this before. The server knows all of their names, or I should say, their nicknames, because almost all of them have one. Nicknames are as common as gossip here. I kind of want one. One of the old boys talks more than the rest. Some of them don’t say a word other than hello and goodbye. They are all weathered and gray-haired. The Talker laughs at his own jokes and isn’t afraid to admit that he tried to charge his cell phone with his razor cord. He […]
It’s been raining a lot here, but when it isn’t, the sun shines hard but it never gets extra super hot like Austin. I saw a picture of some Austin friends on Facebook and they were at a baseball game with sweat dripping, their hair all wet with it. I can feel it through the screen, but then through my window screen at home I feel a soft breeze and remember all there is to love about Minnesota. Until winter, when I will remember all there is to love about Austin. It’s strange to look at these photos and think of our Texas home and friends because it’s been not just a whirlwind but more like a hurricane, bringing us back Home and to a New Life. New Lives. More and more I realize that as much as this family will always be a whole, we’ll always be separate, just as we were […]
I heard the horn, over and over, the crunch of the tires on the driveway. My boys were home, and let me tell you this: I may never let them go more than a 20 mile radius away from me. I missed them so much. During this transition, they were in Texas with their Daddy, and Nanny and Auntie K and Uncle K. Elsie and I were here, in Minnesota, and it felt like months, it really did. The side of the van opened to them and Asher fell into me and we were down, kneeling on the driveway, and he was making this sound I’ve never heard. A laugh while crying sound. I’ll never forget it. I pulled Miles in too, and I cried because of relief and sadness and joy. It’s over, I told them again and again. That part is over. And they seem so much older, the way kids […]
I am sitting in the back of a coffee shop, on a love seat. There is a table of men at the front of the place, and a table of women nearby, the wives. One of the ladies turned to me as I was getting settled and told me they have room for me at their table. Oh how nice, I said, hearing my thick Minnahhsooohtan accent lining up with theirs. I turned them down only because I have work to do, over here on the love seat, where I’m writing this instead of doing the work because coffee shops always make me want to write about them. Small town coffee shops buzz differently. The customer’s faces stay the same, but are peppered with new ones–people from all over, here for the lakes and the trees and the very very green everything. We do hang onto our vowels here, long and thick. Those […]
My bare feet were up on the dash. The windows were open. No radio, no iPod, no talking, no thinking….just the night sounds of Minnesota. I got to sit where I am the most at home, engulfed in those night sounds and peace. At least for a few hours, the croaking frog chorus, the birds saying good night, the crickets and the back drop of a deeply still silence that makes all the creature sounds beautiful. A few days ago, in Texas, we turned on to our street and Miles pointed out the cemetery. He said, Whenever we turn that corner, or pass another cemetery, I get this weird feeling in my stomach, I don’t know why. Yeah honey, I know what you mean. Many might think of evil, of spirits or even zombies, but I think what we feel is grief, goodbyes and all the memory stories of lives left. Yesterday […]
Lately he has been hanging out with me, just sitting there on the couch or plopping down on the floor, flat on his back, while I hang clothes in my closet. He talks and talks and talks. Mostly about Legos or Star Wars or other things that he thinks about all the time. The other night, at bedtime, he said he couldn’t get to sleep because of his busy mind. My brain tries to focus on so many things at once, he said. It won’t stop going fast from thing to thing. Oh how I know. And how I wish I could slow it down for him, this boy with his mother’s brain. But I can’t, and maybe he’ll be a writer or think quick on his feet in his work, whatever it is. Maybe he’ll think up the greatest new thing to help people, because of his ideas, the ones that never […]
It’s a short flight from Atlanta to Austin. I’m on my way home from Mom 2.0 Summit. It was held at the beautiful Ritz Carlton hotel in Buckhead. The summit is a really well done and totally-worth-it experience, and It was a lot for me. Right now is not necessarily the best time to be away, to feel so out of sorts. Traveling makes me get all out of sorts no matter how intentional I am about it all, trying to remember to just be. This morning I woke up way too early to catch a return shuttle to the airport and it was all so smooth and simple and then there I sat, two hours before boarding, at the gate, writing and slumping over a little in my seat from being so tired. All I did last night was stay in. I ate really fantastic french fries and I was writing and […]
She said, Yeah…you get to just be human now… and I closed my eyes and saw the sun shining all aglow around her brown curls. But she was on the phone, so this was just me, thinking of her. A friend who came to me perfectly and has stayed and we’ve walked these things that can’t be predicted. It hit me so hard. I get to just be human now. Well, that’s obvious, a person would think. We’re people, humans. Yup, be one. But some of us are just so opposed to this, sailing around so sure of sainthood, of rightness with all things, of overcoming and pressing on and keeping straight. I’m so tired. And then sometimes you walk into something so foreign and terrifying that there is absolutely no way to deny your humanity. You can only be absolutely sure you are going to make a whole lot of mistakes while […]
Just Write, revisited. Just Write {1} We are driving along, just the two of us. I channel surf for tunes as Elsie Jane kicks and coos from her backwards position behind me. Girls Just Wanna Have Fun is where I land and I sing it at the top of my lungs, windows down. Somehow she loves it when I sing. The working day is never done, but girls, they wanna have fuhunn. I pass by a house with much recycling out front. Cans and cans and bottles and bottles and cardboard boxes. All from alcohol. I think about how that used to be my end of the driveway and how it didn’t take long to add up and so I’d try to hide parts of it under cola types of things. I think about how, with the boys, I had to pump and dump a lot and worry because it is very simple: I was […]
The dog is hiding under my desk because the thunder is pounding so loud. Asher is at school, but he’s probably thinking about how God must be bowling or moving furniture, because that’s what he says thunder is. I don’t mean to be vague or leave you with teasers, but life is so different right now than a few weeks ago. I can’t really talk about it right now, but I’m sitting here in awe of how God takes time from bowling and rearranging furniture to care for me so whole-heartedly despite my messes. Getting sober started a very slow honesty in my life. It’s really hard, to face really big things and it has taken me over four years to be truly free of lies I was living. And I’m sure I’ll discover more, but I don’t need to know right now. I just need to keep not running from them. I […]
This post was originally freely written about 6 years ago. I edited it for the now that I live in, but very little. It seems my heart is still there: I want a cottage style house built by my Dad somewhere near water and so many acres of nothing but grass and dirt and trees. I want salvaged barn doors in that cottage somewhere, to pull to the side, heavy and creaking. I want built-in book shelves filled with colorful stacks and rows of books. I want vintage things all around, from years ago and grandparents. I want a really big garden full of fruits, veggies, herbs and flowers. I want a cozy space for guests to stay and kids to play above the garage. I want all of that, and yet I still want the house to be small, holding us close together so there’s nowhere we can go to end up feeling like […]
