Last TIME
The kids go back today. You know how that makes me feel, so I won't go into it again. However, I do have a feeling of great satisfaction over the memories we've created this week. When you're dealing with little children, you're just never sure what's sticking. I mean, they're really young. Will they remember any of this? Assuming not, my concentration has always been to make sure they come away from time spent with us just feeling loved. That's all. And yet, that's everything. This time, though, Lilli has been running in, from whatever she's doing, and saying, "Can we make cookies like we did last TIME?" "Remember when we took pictures with the horses, and I wore my princess dress...
You’ve Got Your Greens, Your Pintos, Your Refrieds…
It was like any other night of putting Lilli to sleep. She asked for five books (which was negotiated to two) and then, when those were done, she wanted me to sing some songs. I started off with "Somewhere over the Rainbow," which she always requests first, and then I went on to "You are My Sunshine." But she stopped me. "Sing the beans song, Mimmie." Blank stare. "You know, the one about the beans." Deer. Headlights. "Mimmie, come on!" The only thing I knew to do was to start singing every song that I'd ever sung to her and hope I landed on it. After two failed attempts, I started singing "Silent Night." She got really quiet, and didn't interrupt. When I got to the chorus, she sat...
Pa Rum Pa Pum Pum
There is always something that happens to me when I'm around the kids. It's a slow-down of sorts, a stepping off of my whirling world to find a different pace - the pace of a child. Now, I'm not talking the pace of the average American preschooler who, by sheer virtue of being born here, to a set of upwardly mobile parents, are involved in twelve extracurricular activities and have to eat their snack in the car on the way to Portuguese-as-a-second-language. No. I'm talking about the natural rhythm of a child. Wake up. Eat. Play. Eat. Sleep. Play. Play. Snack. Play. Eat. Sleep. It's simple. There are no real deadlines except for those imposed by their own body. The only urgencies...
Brave
What if we all decided that we wanted to figure out what was the real cause of the old pain in our lives? You know, that brokenness you've been carrying around for, what, a year? Five? Fifteen? Thirty-seven? What if you just woke up one day, and instead of saying "I'm so tired of this," you said, "I'm going to figure out why I'm still carrying it." I have a friend who made this claim about a year ago, now. She's given me the privilege to walk a piece of life's road with her, while she's been on her quest, and let me just say that the terrain we've been covering has been really rough and rocky. There have been some places along the way that have been so thick with thorny vines and...
If You’re Happy and You Know It
Sometimes there is no one moment or clever analogy for me to share. Sometimes it's just a day spent in the company of people I love, and when I sit down to reflect on it, I realize that's the story. It's not a single thing, at all, but twenty-four hours worth of single moments, doing everyday things with my family who are very rarely all together in the same place at the same time. Do you ever find yourself pulling out of a scene, mentally, and viewing it like a spectator? I found myself doing that all day, yesterday, like when I sent Lilli out the door with Maddie to "go work the horses," for instance. Or when we met Kevin for lunch at the office and I watched him, in his business...