september first

The sun is spicy on our skin and we are still harvesting lots of peppers. The kids are still having afternoon swims in Grandpa's pool and it's still a little too miserable to take walks in the afternoons, so we've been mostly staying indoors, growing weary of the summer heat and ready for the cool blow of an autumn wind on our faces. 

Then this morning, I felt it. Breezy with a chill on the front porch, lifting the tiny hairs on my skin. It felt like fall, smelled like cool, packed earth and firewood (probably someone just burning trash). Such a kind gift on this first of September.

I never cared much for fall when I was growing up in Texas. It was an in-between time, still suffocatingly hot and usually brown and crisp, only marked by the start of school and leaves that started falling with no fanfare, brown and brittle. The cool weather didn't come until the later months, and by that time I was ready for Christmas. Now that I am witness to what a magical time of year this is in colder climates... I am captivated. 

I don't have to explain to you the joy that comes with the changing of leaves and turning of the weather, lugging out the boxes of sweaters from the attic and the feeling of zipping up boots over thick woolen socks. I know this is the over-played trope of the characters we play on social media. But it's a special kind of magic that can take hold of the hearts of so many adults - when we are all so distracted by consumption, overstimulation, quick entertainment, the never-ending barrage of lights and noise from our many devices - if only for a moment, to the simplicity of the changing of leaves. There's no wonder like a wonder of nature. It's what we were made for. 

a brush with death

part one

When my abuela was three

she would bathe with her little cousin 

in the tub on hot days.

When I think about her childhood

I always imagine chickens and a courtyard

and laundry on the line

Because these are the bits I piece together

from the stories she has told me - 

I imagine dusty light and air thick with heat

but I know this must have been a galvanized tub

in a four-walled bathroom.

It was 1933.

Frida Kahlo was unhappy in Manhattan

A great dust bowl was forming in the midwest

And Ghandi had been arrested

In her little corner of the world, however

she was three years old

playing in the bath with her cousin

in an old house in Mexico

and her mother splashed them 

and they giggled wildly,

the last of their baby years

clinging to small brown bodies.

Somehow (and she remembers this clearly)

she fell and hit her head, as children do,

always sending their parents in a desperate panic

to protect the life for which they would die.

She remembers the blood

blood on the tiles

and blood blooming in the water,

and screaming for her father.

(Two years later, her father would be gone -

Not dead, just absent. 

This would not be the last time 

she would cry for him)

This, she does not remember:

how they rushed her to the hospital

but they must have talked about it,

in that reverent, unbelieving, wide-eyed way

in which parents share such stories

with anyone who will listen,

and so today, it is the story she tells.

Eighty-nine years later

she can still feel the scar

beneath her thinning gray hair.

"Our first memories impact us" 

she said when she told me

and in a brief moment of 

pondering the endless threads

of possibilities life offers

I thought about how close

my children came

to not existing.

part two

Not to be dramatic, but -

It's twice now 

I've held his life in my hands

My only instinct

my only focus and breath 

and purpose to my very existence

in that moment

To save him, save him, save him

It's not that 

he came close to death,

but that death is always lurking, I suppose

and we constantly make choices

which brush it casually to the side:

Some other time, perhaps.

Not feeling my knees hit the concrete, hard

as I lunge forward

(He's floating downward,

I first grab his leg,

attempting to lift up and out, effortlessly

with my weak and trembling core

his twenty-eight pounds upside down

by a single ankle

But that's stupid,

I've never been more stupid -

Just get his head above water) 

Or my elbow scrape 

against the rough side of the pool 

as I jump in

(He's sinking

in slow motion, 

why am I not faster? 

My hands grope gracefully,

churning the water.

I am a ridiculous dancer -

there is no yanking even in 

three and a half feet of water)

Or my ankle 

slam against the wooden stairs

on my way downward

(Just keep his head 

from hitting the sidewalk

Which gets closer

During this millisecond

Which lasts for eternity.

There is no stopping 

once your body is flung into

three and a half feet of open air)

Or my hand as it catches my fall 

(The back of the skull, 

That's the tender part,

And he is hurled, his neck swung wildly

but I clutch him close to my body

with one arm

And I will outsmart gravity

If it kills me)

My nervous system's response is visceral

I am shaking, I let out a sob involuntarily

How many times in a day

do all the bodies in the world

escape inches, mere inches,

or minutes? Just minutes

Later, I lie in bed in the quiet dark

Which creates the perfect backdrop

For all the disturbing and fantastical things

To pester my thoughts

But I act in defiance - 

Breathe my gratefulness

Wipe pointless tears  

Kiss his soft cheek 

His small open palm 

Whisper that I love him so much, so much -

And that is all,

That is all I need to know

That's all I need to remember

I fix my thoughts

The what-ifs don't exist

And tomorrow doesn't really exist

Not yet, anyway

But he does

And he's right here

And that's all that matters

in this moment

instrusive thoughts

Feels white-hot
struck by lightning
slips from my ears to the back of my neck to
the tips of my fingers to
the soles of my feet
making them
itchy and restless

Like: being dipped in an arctic pool
then yanked out again -
in an instant, the ice-cold is gone
and what's left is
gaping gasping heaving emptiness

My temples feel cold
and my head, strangely weightless
In my pounding chest, heaviness, and:
Fear Fear Fear Fear
loss of control
falling into nothingness
clawing at the air

I will every muscle to do something about it
control that which brings the fear
My mind is the tool, searching for ways,
for answers, anything to bury the risk

But there's only so much I can do
and I hold with shaking fingers
every possibility
every prevention and promise
offering them up,
Is this enough? Will this be enough?
If I imagine it
then maybe it won't happen

I do the best I can
but some people's best
wasn't good enough
Fear singes those edges, also

I want to revolt, strike, to run, hide
pummel with fists the rudeness
of an over-active amygdala 
but there is nothing there,
nothing threatening me
only my own mind
and its confusion about make-believe and reality

it would be easier

As an introvert, it would be easier to stay home. When social situations exhaust me, when I feel endlessly awkward and don't know what to say in the quiet moments, when I don't know what to do with my hands when I'm done with a meal, when I don't know exactly how I'll feel in the future (plans are the worst... how am I supposed to know if I'm going to feel like peopling on Sunday the 9th at 12pm?!) - it would be easier to say no.

As the daughter of a military man, it would be easier to stay home. When I've witnessed dozens of friendships dissolve due to cross-country moves, when I've learned how hard it is to integrate into existing circles, when I've said goodbye so many times the pain is a peculiar nostaglia, when I grew up moving every three years and can only count childhood friendships with three fingers, when starting something new isn't worth the emotion because emotion is fragile and I know I'll have to leave - it would be easier to say no.

When I've been discarded by people I would have never discarded - because of theological differences, lifestyle differences, age differences, political differences, priority differences, or maybe even just because I never felt freely and unconditionally accepted because of all of the above, and I hold people at arm's length as a result of my own trauma - it would be easier to say no. We pretend these petty problems exist only in high school, but as someone who never went to a brick and mortar high school, I can say I've mostly experienced them as an adult. Even acknowledged, we pretend it doesn't matter in adulthood, because we're strong and impervious, but it matters. And it still hurts, even when you're thirty-one and you're new to town and the table is full and they aren't interested enough to get to know you past that of which they don't approve - your vote, what you wear, where you live, how you raise your daughters. 

It would be so much easier to stay home. It would be so much easier to say no.

But I've held out. I've been okay with the loneliness, and then I've been very not okay with it, and then okay again. I've hoped for genuine connections, prayed for community, waited for someone to want a friendship as much as I do. It's hard, it's so hard. And especially when it's easy, I'm scared. And when it's new, I tread cautiously. I don't assume anything: loyalty or apathy or comfort or appreciation. But I'm trying to say yes. I'm trying to sit at the table. I'm so grateful for the people who choose to sit with me.

breath

It's like breath:
have you ever thought about it?
Have you emptied your lungs
and filled them again,
focusing your mind
on the right amount of oxygen,
the right length of a breath,
the right dispersal of carbon dioxide.
Have you told the cells
to open and absorb
the life that hangs in the very air
we walk through,
and do you marvel
at this unconscious system?
I am awakened to the wonder
of how it keeps happening,
even when I am done marveling.

This is my breath: 
A peach sky and
cicada's song which fills the quiet spaces.
The way my kids love each other
between the bickering.
The way new words
formed by a careful, callow tongue
sound in my toddler's sticky-sweet voice.
Pulling cabbages from the garden
(the ones the rabbit didn't munch)
and with it, making a dish
to fill my family's belly.
The dusk hours and whip-poor-will's call
when the world is painted that ethereal blue
and the ground is cooled by
shadows like a blanket
pulled up under the chin of a sleepy sun.
Mint tea with honey, too late at night.
My babies' flower-stem arms
around my neck:
how the littlest give the biggest love.

I cling to these moments!
They
are my breath.
And in this same way
in which I do not
think about breathing -
it simply happens.
It is simply there.
And then
I am made aware,
and I marvel at how it works,
how it keeps me alive.

this morning at 5

The sky was heavy with
the deep morning blue
of diffused fractional daylight.
The damp air glistened with fresh innocence,
the sunflowers asleep under the weight of rainwater,
my garden, all flat shadows and shapes.

I sat in a chair knowing the seat would be wet.
I could hear the workers with their engines
roaring down the highway
on their way to start their version of the day,
but only just.

What tickled my ear, what had me in wonder
was the chant, the trill, the choir
of a hundred - no, thousand! -
birds politely suggesting:

Listen, please! Attention, please!
This is what it means:
this is the good and perfect thing,
this is the pure and lovely,
the excellent and praiseworthy.

This is the peace we are asked to enter into
our hands held gently, beckoning

just sit - in this wet chair, in the gentle rain,
under a gray sky even, and just listen.
This is balm, this is breath.

I think it's the birdsong that makes the sun rise.
This might be anecdotal, but I saw it respond:
like a thousand strings pulling him up and up
(he might have stayed asleep otherwise)
swirling the shadowy shapes with strokes of dawnlight
I could see the individual drips now
I could see my sunflowers dance now
I watched a bird perch on the railing
so alert and fidgety - imagine, at five in the morning!
Just like one of my children.

I never regret wresting myself
into slightly reluctant wakefulness
gathering my books and cups and
tiptoeing from my sleeping  baby
across my creaky wooden floor
in that narrow slip of time
when night meets the morning
to watch the world awaken
and hear the birds start their version of the day.

beasts

How great, those faceless, resting beasts

wind shuddering their haunches,

shushing them to sleep,

heads bent and shoulders bowed 

mighty, and I cower as I slink past

quiet and watching

on threads of black asphalt

between them.

They shake tangled, wild manes,

stretch out under a sharp blue sky

and golden blanket of sun

belonging here, absolutely.

They peer at me

warning with their grandeur 

that my presence here is an allowance

and small; oh, brief smallness!

How great the years, the rivers that rushed past

the creatures that padded the crumbling earth

the rumbles deep within the mother

that shifted and soothed them,

the God-hands that formed them

Are they always sleeping?

are they always so content 

and trusting that 

the sun and the moon will take turns

the rain will quench them

and societies, abide them

I imagine they rage and protest only when we have gone too far

dug into their flesh

for lifeblood again and again

to run our machines,

torn apart their limbs 

to gorge ourselves

believing happiness

must begin with destruction

in order to gratify short-lived pleasures.

If only they could shake us off like fleas from a dog

But they, those great beasts

were always happy to rest;

content, towering, untamed,

holding secrets and ages.

They let me pass

and when I look over my shoulder

and see that they do not follow

I long for that which made me feel small

summer magic

I love these warm, yellow evenings

with long shadows and golden edges 

The grass just begging us to 

kick off tight, hot shoes and 

feel it, cool and soft beneath our heels. 

How could they rest tired heads 

on their pillows at eight

(such finality)

when the sun has barely begun

to pull up its own covers?

When the sky is still flush with rose

bidding you not to look away

as it turns a shade of periwinkle
that paints the world in twilit blue,

and finally, deepest indigo

dazzled and star-strewn.

So many wonders yet to behold

And we tell them to close their eyes!

How can they accept

that the day is done spinning magic spells

when the fireflies haven’t come? 

Lazy landings, 

claimed in gently clasped palms,

oh lesson in gentleness! 

The day’s last race, 

the fairy-light chase before bedtime. 

They tell us magic isn’t real

But they’ve forgotten what it is to be 

Six on a summer evening

love that always hurts a little

Sometimes I think about how this loving,
this intense, heartpang of a love
this: love that catches in my throat
love that fills my belly 
love that makes me want to toss my arms in the air 
exists amidst the possibility of loss,

inches, mere inches 

but then I think about someday,
when we face real Love, face to face
without the possibility of loss
what will it feel like then?

open and free, like running barefoot in a field
uninhibited, like - drunk on wine and nothing to lose
untangled
unafraid, love? 

love that doesn't always hurt a little

I've never thought about how
I don't even know what that feels like

I only know the kind of love that tiptoes carefully
a heart held, precisely
as delicate glass 
constantly afraid of being fragmented
by this fallen world,
weeping and bruised and angry

but allow yourself the grace

to just think about
feeling love in all its wholeness
the kind that won't crack or sting or teeter
a wholeness only lush and sweet and safe

I'll hold onto love now, with tender caution
hoping love won't break me
letting it drive out my fear by
considering the someday promise
that we'll enter into wholeness

the outdoors & hard little things

Currrently listening: Forces of Attraction by Johan Johannson

I always wondered if it would be easy. Would we ever get out of the house without the dance of lost shoes, fights over mittens, forgotten water bottles? Would we ever walk down the street without me having to yell at little ones to keep close and watch for cars, or someone having to go potty five minutes into our walk despite my reminders before we left? Or the arrival home, with muddy shoes and wet and cold clothing, socks and toys and backpacks strewn about, the effort of having to tidy up after an exhausting trek into the "wilderness." 

Almost every lovely photo you've seen of us outdoors away from home was likely set up with intense beginnings and lots of emotions. It has never been easy; the pendulum has always swung the other way for us, and these outings are admittedly very difficult for me and my neurodiverse brain. Life itself often feels like I'm trying to fill my arms with as many scattered, bouncing balls as possible, but I can only hold a few at a time. Add to that the obligation as a mother to make sure my children have adequate outdoor time and an intimate relationship with nature, a balance between that and indoor play or demonized screen time. Outdoor excursions take all of my energy, every last drop. I won't sugarcoat it, even if the pretty pictures and filters do. They are good excursions, needed and cathartic and fulfilling, but they are also mentally draining. (Remember that two truths and emotions can exist at the same time!)

Some days, I dreaded it. Many days, I decided to stay in. But Charlotte Mason tells us five to seven hours outdoors every day, and modern homeschool educators tell us to aim for about three hours a day, totaling over 1,000 hours outside in a year. Those numbers make me cringe - not just the thought of taking tiny, toddling preschoolers on long hikes or trips to the park, but the mental effort it demands, and how it is yet another way to fail in the parenting/homeschool world.

On gorgeous summer days, yes, we easily stay outside for four or five or more hours. I remember one evening tucking my kids into bed and thinking, "Eleven hours! They only came inside to use the potty and grab their food!" Those are good days, but uncommon. And I won't pretend I made all three of my kids bathe before collapsing into bed on those days. (We at least tried to scrub feet, since shoes were always kicked off despite my best efforts to encourage proper footwear.)

So, that is my story. I love the outdoors, but every relationship has its ups and downs, and I've mostly shared the ups in this space. I've grown weary of people only sharing the positives, because life is a messy, beautiful mixture of both, and our efforts and strength through hard things shouldn't be ignored or swept under rugs (yes, even the hard little things).

But then... last night. On our walk home from the school playground, with the sun just having set behind the rooftops, gentle golden light awash on the street before us. The littlest one contentedly being pulled in the wagon by his big sister, all of my children watching little finches flitting to and fro the newly budding branches to our right... I thought, "this is easy. This is the easy part I was waiting for. It's actually quiet. All of us are happy and content."

It was easy.

I know it won't always be easy, especially as the baby gets older and prefers walking to being pulled behind, or stepping precariously over the side of steep hills to patiently holding mama's hand. (Another layer of my relationship with the outdoors while caring for many children!) But last night my heart swelled when I was once again reminded that everything is a season, and hard work pays off. We can do it. We can gather our children on outdoor adventures. We can let go a little and not worry too much about the mud on the floor. We can plan ahead, even when it's a challenge for our brains. We can do hard things.

dim february

February was a low month for me - physically, emotionally. I know what deep, enveloping depression feels like, and this wasn't that; it was lackluster, apathetic, just... dim. Sometimes I would just it in a chair and stare, not sure what to do with myself, lacking the energy to do the things I knew needed doing. I felt sad sometimes, and discontent and bored a lot of the time. I hadn't felt a lingering depression in years, but still, I knew it was temporary. Stirred by the weather: the low-hanging, flat clouds; the cold, damp air; the absence of sunshine. I should have been more consistent in taking my vitamins! I know how it affects me. 

 

What saved me, as winter came to an end and spring teased us again and again with little glimpses of what she had in store for us, were nature walks. Walking in late winter is underrated; yes, it's cold, but not the numbing, prickly cold of mid-Winter. When you pump your legs to clamor uphill, jump to and fro on fallen logs, and jump over twisted roots, your blood gets pumping and you feel as though it is 20 degrees warmer than it is! So even if your walk begins quite nippy, eventually you will carry with you your very own space heater. Sweet incentive to keep going.

 

Another incentive for me are these landscapes. Hills! Beautiful hills. These scraggly branches and muted colors have their own place in this world of beauty. I love a winter palette. Dusty gray canvas, hazy blue where the light spills, wine shadows along the hillsides. And the textures: feathery dried flowers and fluff-topped grasses and curling bark.

With the sunshine will come new breath and life and purpose.
Until then, I'm holding onto the promise that everything is a season.

our valentine's dinner

So... I forgot about Valentine's day. 

We spent the night at my parents' for Superbowl snacks (that's what I attend for). While everyone else watched the game in the man cave, my sisters and I watched three episodes of Love is Blind which took a total of six hours because we like to pause it every five minutes to psychoanalyze the characters cast members. I ended up going to bed at 3:30 in the morning and getting about three hours of sleep between that time and eight in the morning, when the baby decided it was time to get up for the day despite both of us getting a horrible night's sleep.

I woke up with heavy eyes and a fuzzy brain, but somehow scrounged up the energy to enjoy an almost four-mile walk with my mom before heading home that afternoon. Apparently that's all I had the energy for, because for the last three days my kids have done nothing but watch TV. Oh, how I wish I was exaggerating!

Okay, they have gotten a significant reading done, and they did play some math games on Prodigy, but Netflix and Disney Plus have really been pulling through as excellent babysitters. Homeschooling, what's that? (Between the lack of sleep and having a sick baby for four days, I am spent. I haven't had a week like this in a while, the kind where I just lie in bed watching TV while my kids watch TV. I'm choosing to not feel guilty about it. Tomorrow will be better.)

Back to Monday. I didn't realize it was Valentine's day until my mom and I came back from our walk and I saw that my dad had left out boxes of chocolate on the counter for us all! My parents always get the kids boxes of chocolate, but I was especially grateful for it this year because I failed to deliver. I told my kids the truth: I stayed up too late, was too tired, totally forgot about Valentine's day, and we would have our own special day tomorrow night. They were satisfied.

The next afternoon, I was trying to figure out how to acquire candy to leave by their dinner plates, but I just couldn't justify an unneeded Instacart delivery for cavity-inducing treats, especially after they'd eaten about 20 mini Reece's in the last 24 hours. I remember we had a bag of heart-shaped pasta I happened to buy a couple weeks before, as well as some strawberries and chocolate chips. What is more fun than receiving a holiday treat when you're a kid? Making your own!

I boiled the pretty pasta and made some Alfredo sauce, which I made fancy by adding a couple of drops of red food coloring, and heated up some jarred marinara for the weirdos who prefer it. The kids were so surprised to see pink swirly pasta sauce and festive pasta! Mom. Win. (I mean. I don't want to toot a horn here. But I should forget about holidays more often.)

 

You can't see the color of the Alfredo sauce, but it totally had pink swirls and was actually really pretty!

I told them that after dinner, I had a couple more surprises planned. Not anything super special, but just something I think they'd like. Then I busted out the fresh strawberries and melted chocolate chips, and we made our own chocolate-covered strawberries! The quintessential Valentine's dessert. I also had them make their own chocolate-filled croissants. Super easy - just pop open a tube of croissants and place a few chocolate chips between each layer as you roll it up. So simple, and so fun for the kiddos. 

We ate our treats while we watched A Charlie Brown Valentine. We ended up having so much fun. I really lucked out with all the food I had on hand - strawberries, chocolate, croissants, and that heart-shaped pasta. I don't normally keep croissant rolls on hand, or heart-shaped pasta, for that matter. Between luck and quick thinking, I am reminded that we don't need cheesy, cheap toys (like the unicorn stuffies I bought them last year... of which they reminded me and asked if I would be gifting them something similar) or tons of candy to celebrate a fun day. Don't get me wrong, I still plan on absolutely stuffing their Easter basket with cheap toys and candy. Balance, and all that.

reestablish what is beautiful

What a gift - crisp, bright days when the watery winter sunlight feels warm upon our faces and lightens our steps. Yesterday we took a walk to the park down the street and enjoyed as much of this shift in the weather as we could before it snows again in the middle of the night. Tomorrow we'll wake up to a thin covering of snow, but that is much better than overcast skies and mushy, muddy grass and sludge piled along the roadside.

I haven't felt okay lately, and I needed this so badly. My brain chemicals seem to be working perilously against me. Between functioning as normal and feeling happy, I have moments when I feel apathetic and sad for no real reason, and intrusive thoughts have been mocking me every hour. I know it's temporary, probably a combination of gray, deep winter, and a lack of sleep. Life is finicky. Good and hard, joy and sorrow, constant reminders of humanity and mortality. Feeling sad when there's nothing to be sad about. I need a reprieve from my mind. 

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about authenticity, social media, and comparison. I joined Facebook in 2008 when I was 20, and then River was born in 2009. In a way, I've experienced the whole of parenthood and adult life connected to the internet, which is in a way, quite performative. Do we as a society know how to live without the constant sharing of thoughts, opinions, and experiences? Social media has helped me to feel less alone during different seasons of my life. I used it to feel supported, to keep up with faraway friends, to share about our lives, but most of my relationships on the internet barely reach below the surface.

Our true friends see all of us - the highlights and the hard days. The wins and the bad habits. But we aren't sharing much about our bad habits, hard days, disobedient kids, poor financial decisions, burnout, anger outbursts, marriage counseling, and parenting failures on social media. Of course not - why would we? Those things aren't for everyone to see. Only the people we trust. So we share the new homes, the vacations, the neatly dressed children, the milestone anniversaries. Sometimes it's like putting on a happy face as you walk into church, minutes after fighting with your husband and yelling at the kids to hurry up and stop kicking each other.

This is where it becomes unhealthy. What we are left with is seeing everyone else's great, while we are struggling. Even if we cognitively know social media is a highlight reel, and we know everyone has relationship problems and money struggles and backtalking kids and lazy days, we aren't witnessing it. Because the bulk of our many relationships takes place online. Because we are constantly "in touch with" people we've met once or twice, even though without social media we would probably never talk to them again, yet now we know their kids graduated valedictorian and they bought a brand new car. It makes the sting of living paycheck-to-paycheck that much more painful; the way you're fighting for your neurodiverse child's education that much harder.

Why must we share at all? I guess that is what I'm struggling with, personally.
The motive, the purpose.

We only have so much mental capacity and emotional energy for the people in our lives. Our relationships must be limited; we cannot give the depths of ourselves to hundreds of people, or fully appreciate and lovingly tend to the depths of many in that measure. What's left is the shallow, the highlights, the carefully selected wins. Nothing of the hard and the messy that makes life layered and real and beautiful and raw. 

If anything is the poster child for toxic positivity, it's this. Silent, unassuming, but it can become so unhealthy. It's the lie that life is only worth sharing with others when it's a nice and tidy package. I have contributed to it as well.

 

In many ways, social media has saved me. It surely has its time and place in people's lives. It's because of social media that I ever discovered I have ADHD. I have felt cared for, supported, and less alone at times because of different communities I have found on social media. I even met one of my dearest friends through social media! I don't believe anyone is wrong for utilizing it. I only wish to address what can make it unhealthy. As with everything, there are seasons. I don't think I will shut the door on social media completely. Perhaps I need to work on myself, my relationships in the here and now, to quiet my mind and slow down. 

I used to think I didn't compare myself to people on social media, but only recently did I realize I do. I may not envy big houses and tropical vacations, but I envy what I see as beautiful, aesthetic, quiet lifestyles. Homesteads and crafting mamas who make their children's clothing by hand and greet the day by gathering eggs from their backyard chickens every morning. Mothers who parent instinctively and always gently, make healthy homecooked meals, have endless energy for hiking trips (even with newborn babies!), definitely never yell, and whose toddlers definitely never throw temper tantrums. Those are the kinds of things I was finding myself envying. (I know I've got some stuff to work on.)

True love is wanting the best for someone. True selflessness. It's not a matter of jealousy and not wanting goodness for others - it's the lack of layers. The lack of all the different nuances of life. The lack of truth, by the omission of what is uncomfortable.

And I was so lost in my phone, distracting myself from the imperfect with everyone else's version of perfect. I would pick it up in the quiet moments, instead of just letting the quiet moments be and expand and create their own goodness. (Must my mind always be overstimulated?) I felt the need to share every interesting thought or funny occurrence or sweet moment. And for what? Engagement, approval, make-believe relationship building with the collective hundreds.

I'm reading The Fellowship of the Ring, and this quote that Tolkien wrote gave me chills when I compared it to my relationship with social media at its most unhealthy when I gave it up during the summer: 

"And yet, it would be a relief in a way to not be bothered with it anymore. It has been so growing on my mind lately. Sometimes I have felt it was like an eye looking at me. And I am always wanting to put it on and disappear, don't you know; or wondering if it was safe, and pulling it out to make sure. I tried locking it up, but I found I couldn't rest without it in my pocket. I don't know why. And I don't seem to be able to make up my mind."

I want to reestablish what is beautiful to me. I want my thoughts to be clear and unencumbered by what is share-worthy. I want to walk into a messy room and instead of wondering why other mothers seem to be able to keep a clean house, I want to see the evidence of life and my children flourishing in all of their hobbies and interests. I want what is simple and prosaic to bring me peace and gratefulness for what I have - the sink full of dishes, a rug that needs vacuuming, the breeze blowing the curtain at an open window.

I want to allow the time for things to brew slowly, I want to steep in the relationships that I am living, not experiencing through a screen. I want to write more letters. I want to talk to my best friend on the phone more often. I want to fully engage in the moments happening around me - in the dusty sunlight of my home, the giggles of my baby, the petals of the wilted flowers falling to the table. I want to see it all.

Real life. Good and hard. Real and raw and beautiful.

rewards of a winter walk

Never!
Ever!
Ever!

underestimate the positive effects of a winter walk. Biting breeze, chill breath, frosty fingers, frozen lungs, red and rosy cheeks lifted in smiles. And the way the pink sunlight reflects on sheets of ice on the streets. And the mysterious prints of others in the snow of those who came before us. And the reaching arms of the bare, brittle trees contrasted against the icy blue skies streaked with clouds.

The kids giggle and race. Complain about tired limbs on the way home. Peel off damp mittens and socks once inside. Anticipate the warming of insides with mugs of cocoa while waiting for the comforting bubble of the kettle. Pushing the buttons that control the heat, one, two, three times, then claiming fleece blankets and spots besides the vents. 

These adventures seem daunting - they do. I am so often led by anxiety, in many areas of my life. I feel as but a little mama, taking on these hard things, bundling children again the wind, making sure toes and fingers stay warm and attached, making sure small bodies stay visible to passing cars along the side of the road, and that roads aren't crossed in a bustle of forgetfulness. It is all so much. 

But I always enter the warm house once again with a sigh of we've made it. And somehow - although I've always claimed to dislike cooking - the prospect of warming the kitchen with the heat of the stove, the clacking of utensils, and the stirring of a fragrant meal in my cast iron pot is a welcome one. The small, quiet room where nourishment will be simmered to perfection after exploring the wide, bright, exposing outdoors. Low light. Steam rising lazily. The scent of spices. The bubble of oil. A sip of hot cocoa. Iced toes in fresh socks and cozy slippers.

There are rewards, and they are a direct result of what makes things like this hard. Energy expended and delectably replenished. Frozen hands made deliciously warm. Bored and restless children made new, and simple blessings newly appreciated. 

A truth - it's always worth it. Get out early enough to fill bellies with a home-cooked meal, late enough that a walk feels like an unknown adventure, the rush of frozen air and aching muscles a welcome freedom in contrast to the hours of school and indoor play and chores. Yes, it is worth it. Every time.