be here now

October 9, 2014

I was driving along and paying close attention to how many leaves have fallen. Holy buckets, I thought. It happens so fast. And it was so gusty, so the leaves were swirling and whirling and even getting caught up in the air, sweeping circles above the minivan. It was like they were trying to fall back up to the branches. I was pulling a trailer with a lawn mower in it, because I am small town Minnesota, hear me roar. I was on my way to the Cre8tive Escape building, which everyone in my life, including me, lovingly calls, The Building. The lawn, it did need a’mowin’. And we have our Grand Opening in ONE WEEK and maybe mowing isn’t the highest priority for that, but it is a high priority for me because the renters at the building should have a nice place to come to work and create, not a marshy […]

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Just Write 156

October 7, 2014

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 […]

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Just Write 155

September 30, 2014

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 […]

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Just Write 154

September 23, 2014

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 […]

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