Hello!

Hi!

A quick note to say I am sorry for not posting more these last three weeks! I had an unexpected health issue that is now resolved (bye, bye gallbladder!) but the surgery has taken a lot more out of me than I anticipated. In true Serenity style I blocked off THREE WHOLE DAYS to recover from my surgery before returning to blogging, working on revisions, and continuing the latest manuscript. Instead, I spent a solid 10 days in a recliner, binge-watching 800 Words and Doc Martin while getting increasingly irritable at my exhaustion. My wonderful girls and Forrest have worked overtime to keep house, bring me copious amounts of tea, and keep me in Jello and applesauce. I am truly blessed.

I am also truly behind. So, I am going to try to do a blog or two this week in between work, Christmas crafts, wrapping, and what looks to be a pretty big snowstorm here in Seattle. But, as we say around here, no guarantees. If I don’t, please know how truly thankful I am for all of you and that from our family to yours, have a cozy Christmas and a joyful New Year.

-S

Christmas Lights

We’re moving into everyone’s favorite time of year here at the Dillaway house. I was feeling a bit under the weather this weekend, and yet, with no reminders whatsoever, the house got decorated from head to toe by the girls, with Forrest on assistance. (Except for putting the lights on the tree. When I tried to explain to him my patented zig-zag method, he rolled his eyes and handed me the string of lights.) And after the dreariness of late fall, seeing the Christmas lights go up around town is a welcome sight.

People really get into Christmas lights around here. We live really far north, farther than Minneapolis and Fargo, farther north than all but the very tip of Maine. The sea air keeps everything pretty temperate here, but that doesn’t change the fact that on the winter solstice, the day only lasts 8 1/2 hours. It’s dark, and people try to push back the darkness with whatever they can. Most people around here put up lights, and more than a few go, well, they go overboard.

There’s a part of it that feels so futile. Some Christmas lights are supposed to make up for the fact that it’s dark when the kids go to school and almost dark when they come home? Some LEDs are going to help us ignore the rain and wind and most of all, clouds, clouds, clouds? It’s a small gesture, that’s for sure. And probably people don’t think very hard about it.

But if they did, if we did, we might see that putting up tiny colored lights in the middle of the darkest time of year is one of the things that connects humanity. Many, many cultures have festivals of light that occur in the late fall, as the last vestiges of the harvest die away. They light lanterns or oil lamps or candles or, yes, some LEDs ordered off Amazon.

None of them actually provide much meaningful light. Even the largest bonfire only lights up a dozen feet in each direction. So why do we do it?

Of course, I don’t know the real answer. I don’t even know if there is a knowable real answer. Maybe, though, we don’t light them to kill the darkness. We light them because the darkness is pervasive, and our little lights are the best way to find each other.

We know that each of those little lights was lit by another human, a human like us who is trying to make the best of a bad situation. Who is going to try, against all odds, to make a grubby, wet, cloudy place seem jolly and warm.

And it’s working. My kids love driving around at night, looking at all the lights. Even the people like us, who only put up a few strands. But it reminds me that other people are doing their best. Some years are harder than others. For our family, right now, things are not simple, or easy. But when I look out of the windows at night, and see all the neighbors lights shining against the dark, I’m reminded that I am anything but alone.

Travel and Travails

We’re headed out of town soon on a big vacation. We’ve done three this year, the three vacations we had originally planned for the covid years. Forrest thought that because the whole world got shut down that he was going to get out of them. Ha! Instead, we did three in one year.

Traveling with my kids is one of my favorite things to do. It’s also one of my least favorite things to do, because it’s hard. Even with them at the ages they are, it’s not easy. They’re not picky eaters, but they’re not adventurous either. They don’t always sleep well in new places. They go and go and go until they drop, and then all hell breaks loose. And when three tween girls are stuck in tight quarters, hell breaking loose is very loud.

But that’s why I love it. Our kids, like most American kids, live a very comfortable life. There’s enough food, warm clothes, shelter and toys and friends and family that are just crazy about them. I wouldn’t change a single thing about their lives. It’s good for them to grow up believing that the world is a place that is full of good things and good people and that they deserve those good things and that they are part of that cycle and will one day be expected to create more good things for the children of tomorrow.

On the other hand, travelling is frequently uncomfortable. Things are different, or unpleasant, or inconvenient. And that’s good for my kids. Because they learn to adapt. No one wants to have to sleep on the floor of an airport or on a bench in a train station or an overcrowded hotel room, but I believe that everyone should at least once. Nothing gives you an appreciation for the finer things in life like a night spent uncomfortably.

One of my favorite memories with my family happened when the twins were 5 and my eldest was 7. We were going up to a town in the mountains and because I didn’t want to have to worry about snow chains or getting stuck in the pass, we decided to take the train. Unfortunately, on the way back, the train was scheduled to come at 6:00 am. So, we got up early, packed up, and waited for the hotel shuttle. We were waiting in the lobby when the hostess told us that the train was delayed and that the shuttle would come in two hours when it was time.

So we asked for our key back, went back upstairs, let the kids watch some TV and then went to grab breakfast at the buffet. The shuttle eventually came and got us and then left us at the station, which had a manufactured building but nothing else.

The train was delayed for another two hours, and that manufactured building got pretty stuffy. Eventually, we schlepped out to the platform just to let the kids play around for awhile. We’d been awake for about three hours when one of the twins called out, “The ground is warm!” It turned out that the train platform had heated pavement and, well, one thing led to another and then there was a giant nest of kids, coats, and luggage sprawling over the empty ground.

Eventually, people meandered over to wait for the train and I like to think that some of them were charmed by the three little girls building a playhouse out of suitcases. And a little while after that, the train came, blazing a way through the snow that had fallen over the weekend. We ate a sleepy breakfast on board and came home to take naps. And I don’t remember the headache I’m sure I had, or the whining that definitely happened. What I remember is my kids learning that hard moments aren’t simply endurable – they can be an adventure.

I don’t know what the world will look like when my children are adults. It’s still being built. That’s the challenge of modern parenting. How can we prepare them for something that we can’t predict? The answer, of course, is in the question. We teach them how to cope with the unpredictable. How to be flexible and inventive. How to remain calm and compassionate in stressful times. And how to create spaces of calm in the middle of chaos.

So we travel. Even though it’s hard and annoying and stressful – no, because it’s hard and annoying and stressful. See you on the other side!

Missing Out and Opting In

We’re heading into the holidays, which means a significant amount of my free time is beginning to be spent on creating magical moments for my kids. Don’t get me wrong, I actually love this part of my life, even the really annoying parts like running out to the store for more tape at ten o’clock at night. Part of the reason I love it is because it’s all really fun. I like having a decorated house and baking and crafts and all the little traditions we have created in our family.

The second, bigger, part of the reason I love the holidays is because I opt out on a lot of it. Not in a general sense, since we do all the big Halloween/Thanksgiving/Christmas-y things. (Except for Elf on the Shelf. Props to all of you who move that little gremlin every day, but no thank you. I don’t need that creepy doll staring at me all month.) But I personally opt out on a fair amount of our family’s festivities. I get it all set up, everyone ready to go, and then I wave goodbye to them as I savor my cup of tea.

I told a friend last week that I was not planning on going out trick or treating with my kids. I do all the school parties and all the costume procurement and then, when the big moment arrives, I sit at home and fold laundry. She was aghast. “After all that work, how could you miss out on the good part?” My response: “With pleasure.”

There’s a part of all of these holidays where my whole family disappears for awhile and I get to stay back and enjoy the quiet and get the house back into some semblance of order and most of all get my own self back into some semblance of order. I am missing out. I’m missing out on feeling unappreciated and overwhelmed, on being disconnected and frazzled. I’m missing out on losing my temper and then feeling like I ruined everything.

But by missing out, I’m opting in to a lot of things. I’m opting in to the moment when my kids walk back in, excited to tell me all the things they saw and did while I was being boring and mom-like. I’m opting in to being able to help them with their mittens for the seventeenth time because I know that in a moment, I’ll be able to rest. I’m opting in to them being able to have fun with Forrest and their friends and building a world that doesn’t have me at its center.

This way isn’t for everyone. There are people for whom being in the middle of the party is the only place to be. Where the holiday wouldn’t feel like a holiday if they missed out. I live in awe and envy of them. I wish I could live, buoyed on Christmas spirit, from event to event to event, with a final New Year’s Eve hurrah.

Instead, this is the person I am. I can fight against it (and have), or I can shrug my shoulders and accept that my need for rest is not a flaw to be fixed but rather a reality to navigate. My experience of the holidays is supposed to be good too, right? And for me, that occasionally means missing out.

Fighter Jets

I try not to talk too much about current events on this blog, mostly because the ever-changing nature of the world means that within a week or two, whatever I’ve talked about is probably not happening anymore. Or we’ve found out something new, or we’ve realized that what we thought was true was just a snap judgement that turned out to be incorrect.

But this morning, at drop off, one of my daughter’s peers mentioned something about her acting silly and how it was probably because she had high blood sugar. The girl wasn’t wrong; my twins often do enter school with higher than ideal blood sugar. It turns out being in a class all day burns a lot of energy, and it helps get them through to snack time if they’re slightly high.

After the friend had flitted away, my daughter turned to me and said, “I really hate that.” I asked her to clarify, and she talked about how whenever she’s being weird or loud or, you know, a kid, the other kids attribute it to high blood sugar to get a laugh. And it turns out that diabetes is one of those things that it’s ok for her to joke about but less ok for other people to joke about. Because we don’t live it. We can’t possibly understand.

I’m not worried about bullying or anything. Kids are inadvertently rude all the time and there’s nothing malicious about it. My daughter knows that too. She knows that if it bothers her enough, she can tell them to stop or ask for help. There are a dozen adults who can have that conversation. She knows that kids have no way of knowing it bothers her unless she says it does. And for right now, it’s not that big a deal. One of the many annoyances you get when you spend your day with 10- and 11-year-olds.

An old version of me would have waltzed in, ready to educate or reprimand, going in with guns blazing. Forrest calls me a “fighter jet” parent. Not a helicopter parent who always watching. No, I’m just constantly on standby, ready to go bomb the crap out of anything that I perceive to be a threat. My kids are pretty consistently reassured/mortified by the fact that there is no amount of embarrassment that will deter me from taking care of them.

I didn’t used to be this way. I learned it because I had to. When you have a three-year-old who needs injections and candy (and occasionally to be force fed juice), you get pretty good at aggressively ignoring busybodies. And when your kid’s health depends on being very clear about exactly what needs to happen, you get good at communicating directly. Most of all, I’ve gotten very, very good at realizing that other people’s impressions of me are much less important than my kids’ trust.

As my kids age, though, it's been hard to have to step back and let them decide when to call in the fighter jet. It’s hard to watch them choose not to take action, to decide when keeping the peace is more important than feeling at ease. To watch them, in short, go through the same growing up process that we all have to go through.

I started this saying I don’t comment on current events here, but the other night, there was a debate in Pennsylvania in which one of the participants needed accommodations. Not for diabetes, but I’ve heard a lot of negative comments about his needs. And every time I hear it, I am reminded that if my daughter were up on that stage and her low glucose alarm went off and she ate a few Skittles, or if she went high and her voice got a little too loud, those same people would be talking about how unfit she was. How could we really trust that she was competent? How do we know if she’s fully in control if her body isn’t working exactly as it’s intended to?

And I want to bomb the crap out of it. I spend a lot of my time working to make sure that my kids get the necessary accommodations, and it terrifies me that someday they’re going to have to enter a world that treats people with disabilities with suspicion and contempt. As though the rest of us able bodied people are always even-keeled, rational or unaffected by things like hunger, exhaustion or pain. As though making sure that people with disabilities are given what they need is too much to ask.

I don’t know the best way to deal with a well-meaning kid who makes an off-color joke. I don’t know how to counsel my daughter. She’s got to find her own way of being in the world - the magic words that will make her meaning clear while also keeping her friendships intact. The world is full of people who accidentally hurt each other, whether that’s through attributing everything to their disability or asking them to pretend like it’s no big deal at all. There’s a middle way, but it’s hard and complex and requires forgiveness and understanding and most of all, humility.

The fighter jet inside of me is learning that humility, one day at a time, learning to make the effort to listen to the needs of my kids. And in turn, learning to listen to the needs of the other people around me, because lots of people have struggles we don’t see. This stuff isn’t easy. There are complexities here, difficulties that must be navigated with thoughtfulness and wisdom. But not a single one of those complexities is solved by making jokes. We’re not kids anymore who don’t realize what we’re saying, and it’s time we started acting like it.

Complexity and Complaints

It’s smoky again today and I’m really quite over it. If it feels like I’ve been talking about the wildfire smoke for the last two months, that’s because our area has basically been covered in medium to high levels of wildfire smoke for the last two months. Everyone is grumpy, frustrated, and eagerly awaiting the forecasted rain this weekend. If it comes. We’ve been tricked before.

Mostly, it feels like there must be something someone somewhere should be doing. I ended up looking into it and after a few hours of poking around weather blogs and smoke forecasts, it turns out the answer is yes. There is something someone somewhere could be doing. And they’re choosing not to.

And that choice not to act is the right one, even with the smoke.

The main fire that’s causing all of this frustration is right along the edge of one of the two highways that connect Eastern and Western Washington. This may sound confusing to my east coast brethren, but here in the wild west, the mountains mean business. Which means, for 4-5 months a year, all those cute mountain roads are covered in literally a dozen feet of snow. So there are two roads that connect our side to their side, and by extension, the rest of the country (unless you drive south and then east which can be dicey too).

As far as I understand it, the fire, which is along Route 2, is being treated very carefully because the usual fire management techniques will make those areas more likely to have mudslides when the rain returns. Again, remember that around here, the mountains mean business - the 2014 Oso mudslide killed 43 people. If Route 2 gets shut down, there’s only one way in or out. One way for trucks, busses, and passenger cars to get through. So we’re all just sitting in a giant cloud of smoke for a month.

I hate it. I hate that it smells like a campfire outside. I hate that we have to run our furnace fan to filter the air. I hate that my kids have to stay in at recess half the time. But I also admire the bravery of this decision, because I understand it. We live in a time where people complain about everything, all the time. There are entire facebook pages for our town where people pretty much whine about traffic, neighbors, kids, dogs, stores, and of course, the city government. And often, the things that are being complained about are really important and helpful - just not to the complainer. Why build nicer bus stops? I don’t ride the bus. Why create dog parks? I don’t have a dog. Why do they sell organic vegetables? I don’t buy them.

The world is complicated and as I age, I am realizing more and more that it takes courage to admit and accommodate that complexity. To sit in a smoky neighborhood and know that these decisions are hard and supported by data. For too long, our forest management practices were determined by common sense. Common sense that was short-sighted and wrong and mostly, based in an unwillingness to delve into the complexity and self-control of hard decisions.

And in the end, when the rain comes, and the smoke season is finally, finally over, we’ll be able to look back and remember that when our society knew better, it did better. One hard decision at a time.

Legos and Gratitude

Yesterday, I looked over at Forrest in horror and informed him that I had forgotten to order Advent calendars. He looked at me in horror that not having them ordered on October 10th constituted an emergency on my part. Moments like this remind him that we really are two completely different people and there are parts of me that will always remain a mystery to him.

Of course, it wasn’t really an emergency because there’s plenty of time to order them, but my usual pattern is to order them in January at half price and then stash them in the garage until the next Thanksgiving. That way I feel justified giving my kids something that to my mind feels extravagant. “A lego advent calendar? How about you open the little door and see the picture and feel thankful for that? When I was a kid, we didn’t even get the chocolate kind!”

There’s a lot of things that I try to nickel and dime my way into justifying. I want my kids to have nice things, but also to understand and appreciate those nice things. I want them to have gratitude for what they have and awareness of how fortunate our family is. We live in a place where the standard of living is very high and while we appreciate that - we love the parks and concerts and schools - we want our kids to remain grounded.

So I tell myself that we can have all of those good things, but only if we buy them at the right time or get the cheap seats or forego the luxury add-ons. Which, to be honest, has led to some pretty hilarious moments when my kids’ friends don’t know how to close our minivan door (“You gotta pull on it, honey.”) or when my kids get ridiculously excited about finding deals (“Mom! These jeans are on sale for $8. Nordstrom jeans! For 8 dollars!”). But I worry sometimes that instead of teaching them gratitude, I’m teaching them to ignore their old-fashioned mom.

Forrest and I, like most parents, try to give our children the things that we remember wanting. This gets pretty specific sometimes, like the annual L.L. Bean Backpack or the frozen berries that fill our freezers. And we talk about how “Back in the day, we had to walk uphill both ways to school with only apples and bananas and can you believe that you can get kiwis any time of the year and what are you complaining about, that sandwich looks just fine, I wished I had the Boar’s Head lunch meat when I was your age?”

But my kids don’t want the specific things that I wanted. The backpack means nothing to them, and the lunch meat is wasted on their unrefined palates. They want what they want. Which, at the moment, is a crap ton of fidgets and more screen time.

That last one is funny, because I don’t remember the words “screen time” coming up once in my childhood. Not once. The TV was ours unless my parents wanted to watch something. They want what I had free access to. And maybe that’s the key. We want exactly the thing it is that is most controlled.

I don’t plan on extending screen time, of course. And my house has more than enough slime, pop-its and nee-doh balls. But perhaps I could lay off the “You should be grateful…” speech a little bit. It didn’t work on me, and it’s not working on them. Gratitude, like all virtues, comes from a life that has been lived. We are never more thankful for a warm house than after a cold walk. Or a soft bed after a long day. Or a good friend during a hard time.

So, what the hell. I’ll buy the Lego advent calendar. It’s not going to spoil them for me to pay full price. At the same time, maybe I’ll lean into letting them live a little rather than telling them what they should be grateful for. And maybe live a little myself, too.

Season's Changing

The seasons are changing around here, and I don’t feel quite ready for it. I’m not talking about summer to fall. No, between the last weeks of smoke and the very hot August we had, I’ve happily pulled out my sweaters and started making crockpot soups and snuggled up with the girls watching Great British Baking Show.

No, I’m talking about this season of life. I can feel the movement away from playgrounds and playdates into fandoms and hangouts. Forrest has already started to find hobbies he never had time for before, and I’m finding myself figuring out what manga to buy and trying to listen to whatever the new version of the Spice Girls is.

Most of all, I’m feeling the subtle switch from being relentlessly demanded into casually dismissed. It’s not that my kids don’t want to spend time with me. It’s just that my opinion doesn’t count for very much these days. This morning at school dropoff, I was approached by a younger neighbor girl who wanted nothing more than to show me all the tricks she can do on the bars. I watched, using my now-rusty excited voice, “Oh my gosh! Look at you, you’re upside down! I didn’t know you could flip like that!” while the twins rolled their eyes and wandered off to find friends.

We’re not fully out of that summer season though. Just like the warm fall days that peek through, I still get a few moments of “Watch this!” and “Guess what I can do, Mom!” But mostly it’s a lot of “See you laters!” and “Can we have so and so over to play Animal Crossing?” (Does screen time count when it’s actually about bonding with friends?) And there’s a LOT of “You just don’t understand, Mom!” (To which I reply, “Ok, can you help me understand?” followed by the biggest sigh you have ever heard in your life.)

Like the end of summer, I find myself mourning the little losses and talking about them probably too much. “Remember when…”, “Oh I miss…”, “It used to be so cute when…” Then again, it’s also fun to see the little adults within straining to come out. One of my kids has started to read every fashion styling book I can find for her. And now she helps me look my best, assuring me that as soon as she’s tall enough, that coat I love? It’s hers.

And it’s nice to finally maybe be able to use some of my life experience to help them make sense of the new, incredibly social world they find themselves in. The other day we were walking and I was talking about an old friend who didn’t make me a priority and so our friendship never really took off because at some point I had to cash in my chips and realize I couldn’t force her to want to be a better friend to me. I’m not sure why, I think I was reminiscing about a particular restaurant we used to frequent and it just came up. But all of a sudden one of them started crying and startled, I asked what was going on.

“It feels like maybe you’re secretly talking about my friendship with so and so.” I assured her I wasn’t, really, I’m far too self-centered and blunt to make a random conversation surreptitiously about her, but that, in the words of my southern brethren, "A hit dog hollers.” If my story hit a little close to home, then maybe she had some thinking to do.

The seasons are truly changing. And I know that these next few years, like all of the stages before them, will probably be a rollercoaster of growth and change and negotiating rules and talking over parenting problems ad nauseam. I’ve got to admit, I’m 100% here for it. In fact, I’m gonna grab me some pumpkin spice and fall leaves and dive right it.

Head Colds and Expectations

I admit it. I’m writing this while curled up in my bed. It’s only Tuesday, but I’m using the excuse of a mild head cold to put my sweats on and shove the dog out of her rightful place and snuggle up with my computer. I slept badly last night and woke up to whatever crud goes around at this time of year and to be honest, I’m giving in for today.

I’ve just finished reading a beautiful blog about the concept of community hospitality, of how important it is to welcome the stranger in real and concrete ways and I feel so much like I should hop right up and cook a meal for someone going through a hard time but here I am. In bed. Sniffling and typing and listening to instrumental covers of pop songs.

My brain feels foggy today, the way it is when you’ve been going full tilt for week after week and then all of a sudden you hit the brakes (or hit a wall) and I’m looking around like, “Was there something I was supposed to be doing today?” and the answer is, “Yes, probably, but it’s not to do with the kids and no one is calling to find out why it wasn’t done and so maybe it can wait.”

That attitude doesn’t come naturally to me. I’ve had to work at it. I know I’m not the only one.

My eldest daughter is constantly indignant at the number of rules, regulations, and lectures that happen in middle school. She spends her life worried that she’s not working hard enough, not practicing her flute or exercising or studying or being kind or any of the other thousand things that she’s been told to do. A lot of my parenting lately is helping her to understand that the blanket statements she gets on, say, handing homework in on time, are meant for students who are less than reliable about homework, and that while her brain interprets the repeated reminders as set-in-stone-requirements, other kids need to be told again and again just to hear it once.

Mostly, I repeat, over and over, “They’re not talking to you, kid. Chill out a little and try to have some fun.” And then I walk to the other end of the house where the twins are and I repeat, yet again, “Look at me when I am talking to you. YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO PAINT THE DOG. And certainly not with acrylic paint. For God’s sake go get the non-toxic tempura if you must.”

I love how I’m literally lying in bed, still writing, still answering emails, still making sure that all the things are going to get done and wondering if maybe some things can wait. I promise you, the items on my task list have deadlines in 2 weeks. They can wait. You can probably guess which of my children take after me and which take after Forrest.

There are so many one-size-fits-all pronouncements in society. It’s not only middle school rules, it’s the general religiosity and moral pronouncements that are made by people from all sides, all walks of life. “If you don’t recycle, if you don’t exercise, if you don’t donate or talk about or have the right opinion, or basically live your life in the way I have deemed right, you are beyond redemption.” And for someone like me, that’s hard. I want to do the right thing. I want to be a good neighbor and a good mother and a good friend. But the expectations are so unrealistic that there are days I just want to give up and be an unwelcoming neighbor and an adequate mother and a reasonably reliable friend.

Because these pronouncements were never meant for me. They’re for the people who maybe need to be reminded again and again and again that we live in a society and that means something and it’s important to leave this world a little better than we found it. But like those middle schoolers with the homework reminders, the people hearing the rules aren’t necessarily the people who need to be told.

And if you came here for any answers, well, first of all, welcome, you must be new, and second, I don’t have any. But I do know that raising expectations on each other to unsustainable levels in order to rebuild our society through shame and perfectionism isn’t doing what we think it is. This isn’t Victorian-era London. We’re not going to paper over our societal ills with increasingly complex behavior requirements.

I think somewhere along the line, we all decided that we were done with all that good and evil business, and instead, we hid it behind words like “useful” or “healthy”. Then we let the people who still did use those words tell us that evil was out there and it looked like gay people or drug addicts or people without homes. When in reality, evil has always been with us. And it looks like indifference to humanity. Indifference to the humanity of each other. And indifference to our own humanity.

Some days, remembering that humanity means that it’s ok to be simply adequate. To snuggle up in bed and eat chicken soup and drink tea. To give ourselves and others permission to rest in our human imperfections. Even when the stuffy nose isn’t really that bad.

Smoke and Ashes

It’s smoke season in Washington, when the hot summer has baked our grass and forests and brushlands for months and the slightest spark can set everything ablaze. In the west, where we live, we’re mostly sheltered from fire risk because of the months of rain that fill our rivers and lakes and reservoirs. But the smoke from the east, and south, and sometimes north has a habit of coming down and parking over us for days, if not weeks, on end.

Before moving out here, I never knew that the weather forecast could just say “Smoke". Now, our kids know how to check the air quality, that they have to stay inside until it’s clear, and that the windows stay closed until the weatherman says we can open them again. Smoke was one of the main reasons we got a heat pump last year - it gets awfully hot and stuffy on day 5 of breathing recycled air.

When we moved to Washington 16 years ago, it wasn’t like this. I remember heat waves, and of course the occasional word about wildfires out west, but my life wasn’t affected, not in the least. But a decade of drought takes its toll. Things are changing. And I’m scared.

I’m scared that I’ll look back at this blog and think, “5 days of smoke? Ha! Try 3 months!”

I’m scared that we’ll someday have to evacuate.

I’m scared that my kids will grow up in a world where they can’t have campfires and grills and fireworks because the risk is just too high.

I believe in the resiliency of the human spirit, which is why I tend not to get too overwhelmed by the big threats of our time. No point in worrying, just do the work and together we’ll figure it out. And we have. Our house now has an air filter and our power company is strategically shutting off powerlines to prevent fire risk and we know how to check the air quality and when it is and isn’t safe to be outside.

But I...don’t want to adapt. I don’t want to look up in the sky and see a red sun and feel a scratchy throat and worry what parts of their lives my kids will have to cut off to simply survive. Beyond that, I know that it could be worse. In Pakistan, floods have created a new lake where houses once stood. We’ve watched Texas freeze over and rivers dry up in France and Australia burn.

Some moments it all feels so overwhelming, so I do everything not to think about the big problems. Let me stress about whether the tomatoes are growing or if my kid’s coat will fit them again this year or if the car repairs will last until next year or if I need to go car shopping now. Still, the big problems are always there, looming. And if I do manage to forget them, my car windshield, covered in ash, reminds me.

I remember that humans have survived terrible things in the past, and that their resiliency was no less than my own. I remember that worrying never made anything better. I remember that when hard times come (and they always do) the solution never comes from one person, but from a community pulling together, and that the work we do now to build those communities are the exact thing we should be doing.

Community building seems to me a lot like exercise. I don’t know what health challenges I’ll face as I age. It might be cancer, or heart disease, or something degenerative, like MS or ALS. But what I do know is that being healthier will help me to face those things. And I’m not talking about weight here. Muscle strength, cardiovascular health, a diet that makes my body work well, hydration, rest (!) - these are the elements that will give me the best chances of staying well for as long as I can.

Community building is the same. We don’t know what will come - drought, floods, fires? But I know that a community that is used to giving and receiving support will be better off whatever comes. Because three years ago, who would have expected a pandemic? Who would have known that so many would die?

And yet, our communities have made it through. My own touchpoint is through my children’s schools and I can’t even describe the sheer amount of time and thoughtfulness that went into shepherding them through the vicissitudes of the last few years. We had no idea how to do any of the thousand things we had to do for these kids. Until we figured it out. Together.

Yesterday afternoon, I looked outside and saw the blue skies peeking through the clearing clouds. Relief washed over me and I ran around the house opening windows, smiling. I know that more smoke will come. Hopefully not til next year, but maybe next week. Either way, though, we’ll get through it, like we always do. Together.

Behind the Curtain

There’s a new season of Bluey on Disney+ and our family has been in heaven. (If you haven’t watched Bluey, you should check it out. It’s a kids show, but it’s so so good). The last episode has the father telling a story from his childhood and his kids ask, in horror, “Didn’t you have bike helmets?” His response sounds so familiar in our house, “Nah, man, it was the 80s. Things were WILD.”

My kids think that we were raised in some Mad Max ThunderDome and between Forrest’s farm upbringing and the slightly feral neighborhood I grew up in, they’re not all wrong. I like to think we tell them these stories so they have a little gratitude. But it’s also fun to shock them. I think the most difficult thing to believe is that their beloved grandparents were just plain parents back then, and young ones at that. Not every decision was easy or correct, and as the Bluey episode said, “It was the 80s. Mums were allowed to be mean.” I nodded. Those mums never got lectured at for putting us in time out.

It’s nice to realize in middle age that all of our parents were figuring it out as they went along, making the best decisions they could with the information they had at the time. I like to think that Forrest and I give our kids a look behind the curtain earlier than most - showing them that all people make mistakes, that it’s ok to be wrong and apologize, and that we’re learning every day too. But as my kids age, that understanding has extended from their generally well-meaning if flawed parents to the idea that larger systems are made up of all types of people - responsible and incompetent, giving and selfish, wise and rash. And not all of them are learning every day.

That, combined with the low level of civil disobedience that we nurture in our kids, sometimes puts them in direct conflict with the seemingly inane rules that make up the modern middle school. Vandalism leads to new rules about bathrooms. Classroom time requirements make for crowded halls and short breaks. Fears about school shootings mean every door is locked, every single time. And my scientifically minded child brings her own understanding of statistics to bear. She’s frustrated.

I remind myself that this is as it should be. Young people’s frustrations with the world lead to change. When I was young, those frustrations let me to be a small part of creating a different world for my daughters. I still feel passionately and I still work to make those injustices right.

Just yesterday, a friend and I were talking about her summer job. She’d led a teen girls’ camp that spent a week doing trail maintenance as a service project. And as you might expect, a group of women doing manual labor in the woods led to more than a few comments. But this friend, younger and fiercer than me, made sure to push back on every single comment. Exhausting, perhaps, but the modeling for those teens is something that we could only have dreamed of in the 90s. It just didn’t exist.

But it does now. Because our parents taught us that we were valuable, worthy of dignity, and most of all, that fighting for that dignity isn’t unseemly or aggressive. It is noble. And now we get to figure out what that fight looks like in our time.

I spend a lot of my time working with the PTA at my kids’ school. It’s a big commitment. It sometimes feels exhausting or futile. But a few weeks ago, as I was blathering on about getting some sign printed or some event set up, that same middle school daughter said, “You know, Mom, watching you do all this PTA stuff makes me realize that even grown-ups are just making it up as you go along. And it makes me feel better when I feel like I’m never going to know how to be an adult. Because neither do you!” Then she laughed hysterically while I felt my heart grow three sizes that day.

Because my kids are surrounded by systems and institutions that are flawed. And those flaws can seem set in stone. The Grown-ups Have Spoken. But knowing that those grown-ups are just, well, people, gives my kids both compassion for the people in them also hope that maybe those systems can continue to grow and change to meet the world we live in.

I don’t know what the future holds. I wonder if my grandchildren will say, “The 2010s were WILD.” But I hope they know that whatever challenges come their way, they are just as equipped as anyone else to meet them.

Summer Memories

We’ve just returned from a five-stop tour of the northeast, seeing museums, historical sites, parks and rivers and waterfalls, and most importantly, friends and family that we haven’t seen in many years. We’d planned this trip, or something like it, for two summers ago, but flying cross country and traveling so much was out of the question in July 2020.

It was so fun. It was so exhausting. Even with the amazing support of all of our loved ones, by the time we’d made it down to Washington, DC, we were bribing the kids just to get them out the hotel room door. Heck, I was bribing myself there at the end. And now we’re home, our buckets full of love and memories, and with a long, lazy summer set out in front of us.

Except, the twins don’t really do long or lazy. One of them made a list of the things she wanted to do this week.

It had 11 things on it.

It’s already Wednesday.

We’ve only been home for 48 hours.

I love how much energy they have. It certainly helped as we marched them around Boston, through New York subways, up and down hiking trails and then finally along the Mall to the Washington Monument. But today, I want to celebrate a trip well spent by sitting in the shade with a good book and a glass of iced tea.

There’s a lot of pressure these days to make summers really, really special for our kids. I constantly see that refrain, “You only get 18 of them!” And it’s so much pressure for perfection. We should be doing museums, and parks, and pools, and crafts. We should spend the long hours doing all the things we feel like we don’t have time for during the school year.

But we just had a trip like that. Museums. And Parks. And Pools. (Not so many crafts, to be fair.) And in the end, the thing my kids enjoyed the most?

The People.

That’s what they cared about. All the Aunties and Uncles and Cousins who doted on them and listened to them and made them feel like there is a whole world of people out there who just…like them. It’s kind of crazy, right? The idea that all across this country, there are people who like them for who they are. Who think fondly of them and look forward to seeing them and miss them when they’re gone. I think knowing that might just shape my kids’ childhood more than any Insta-worthy destination would.

These kiddos have grown up in a world full of big uncertainties. They know that the whole world can change in the span of a week. Isn’t it a miracle that the one thing that they are never uncertain about is that there is a whole crowd of people who are rooting for them?

I care a lot about community - finding it, building it, sustaining it. But I didn’t realize how much it mattered until I realized sometime around 2016 that there were no grownups making everything work out. There was no arc of history naturally bending, a slide for us to blissfully ride down. We are our own heroes. And that work looks boring, and annoying, and often exhausting. But as tired as I am, when it comes to the lives of these girls and all the kids I am blessed to know, I find the energy to do whatever it takes so that they know that there is a whole crowd of people who are rooting for them.

Verve

My house is full of the chattering of ten year olds today, and my writing is being interrupted every few minutes with the same internal question:

“Was that a happy shriek? Or is someone literally dying right now?”

It’s hard to tell. The combination of joy and excitement and energy so often combine to create disaster, especially in a house with cartwheels and cooking and crafts, often at the same time. I just asked them to give me a code word to yell if they are really truly hurt, and of course they started yelling it immediately.

So much for that plan.

There is something fiercely alive about this particular stage of life. It’s like these kids hearts are on fire - ready to take on the world, able to navigate the basics, but not yet aware enough to worry about image and propriety and obligation. There’s a wholeness there that I feel like I’ve been working to return to my whole life..

But I’m not the first to notice this aliveness. There are a million books - treasured classics - that we return to time and again. Anne of Green Gables, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, From the MIxed Up Files of Basil E. Frankweiler, The Penderwicks. All of them feature kids in these in-between years, because thier combination of competence and innocence make for such amazing fodder.

When I look back on my own ten-year-old self, though, I don’t remember the confidence and verve. I remember having to stand on the precipice of a world that I had no idea how to navigate. Middle school looming, puberty right there, higher expectations, and, for me. a profound sense of loneliness, even in a crowd. I thought I was the only one who didn’t know what the heck she was doing. Of course, now I realize there was no way that that was true, and I think we can all agree that there’s a lot less of the “throw them into the deep end” philosophy these days, but I wonder if maybe some of that aliveness is there because of the precipice that looms.

I see that tendency in myself as an adult. Everything is normal, boring, exhausting, until some milestone creeps up on me - my baby is going to kindergarten, we’ve been married 15 years, the big 40 is on the doorstep. And then I decide we’re going to make a thousand memories, stop and smell the roses, and make sure to take pictures for the scrapbooks all at once.

Or, the other, terrible kinds of milestones: a death, and illness, the quiet resignation of the end of a dream. The aliveness in those moments feels like a curse. The realization that this chapter is over and other is beginning, whether we like it or not. In this case, we’ve fallen off the precipice. It’s here, and we’re falling, and there’s nothing to do but let the wind pass over us and go where we’re taken.

Perhaps the ear-splitting ten year old intensity I am currently experiencing is a combination of the two. The milestones coming up and the chapters that are rapidly closing. Either way, just being in the same house is like a contact high. I find myself feeling a little less grumpy, a little more joyful, and mostly just honored to have the gift of these kids in my life.

Even if I’m getting a little bit of a headache.

Sick and Tired

Whew. It has been a month. Our family finally got hit with the latest wave of Covid and although it was 100% mild, it feels like two weeks of my life disappeared off the calendar and I am trying to play catch up with all the truly urgent stuff that has piled up. And this writing gig means that when I don’t get to it, the only person I’m letting down is myself. And she’s always the easiest one to make excuses to, right?

I got hit the hardest and certainly the longest in our family, and as I spent day after day barely keeping up and napping for hours, the fear that I would never feel the urge to write or blog again started to creep in. Whenever I’m down, whether that’s sick, or burned out, or simply emotionally exhausted, I worry that I will never get back my oomph. I’ve lost a fair amount of the verve I had in my 20s. I believe I strategically used that youthful energy to survive my early parenting years. It was a choice I would make again, and the loss of that energy feels like less a loss and more of a trade for increased wisdom. But still, the specter of obsolescence, of using up all my ideas and willpower and fire constantly sits on my shoulder.

In part, I believe it’s because I am in the do-it-all stage of my life and, despite all the different ways I’m told that how it has to be, I’m a steadfast refuser to do it all. I will not strive for perfection. I will let myself have a sick day if I am able to. I will not force myself to write for twelve hours a day and then also be a parent and a wife and a friend. I’m going to do the things I must and then do a little bit of all the things I like to and if I fall behind, I fall behind.

But the ageism inside of me worries that I will hit a day when I am no longer able to be thoughtful and vibrant. Maybe I have already hit that day. Maybe my best years are behind me, lost in a haze of diapers and spit up and so many episodes of Dora the Explorer. Maybe I have fallen behind so long ago that I can never catch up to the self I was meant to be.

And maybe that pause, those years, left me on a completely different path than that old self would have run to. That wisdom that I gained led me to veer pretty hard from my youthful dreams. I realized that a small life full of ordinary joys feeds me much more than the alternative. And that when I run on all cylinders, I’m stealing from my future self. I’ve done that, and ended up with ulcers, exhaustion, migraines, anemia. The piper has to be paid, either now or later. And when I pay him now, in all the little breaks that I secretly give myself, the price turns out to be a lot lower. In fact, those breaks are a gift of their own.

Because the urge to write came back this morning. But in the meantime, I got to spend the last two weeks snuggling my kids on the couch, playing video games with them and reading their books out loud and drinking copious cups of tea at the table while we took a small vacation from the school/work/sports treadmill that we are usually on. And I don’t think those weeks were lost. They’re in here somewhere, percolating. Reminding me that changes in plans are not always the worst that can happen. Softening my heart and bringing us all back to those little baby days when all I had to do was exist with my babies and keep them fed and rested.

And that gift - the gift to dip back in time and then jump forward to here - it reminds me that any stage - all seasons - have their unique exhaustions. And my only job is to hold onto the people who bring me back to life when I forget how to find my verve.

Spring Break Snow

The kids are off from school this week for spring break and, although it was 75 degrees last Thursday, it snowed here today. Not just flurries, either. Two days ago it was hail, and the day before that we had some sort of rain/snow mix. But all that’s ok, because I spent the last two days doing spring clothes shopping for three girls who just won’t stop growing.

I don’t remember my parents having to shop this often to keep me in clothes that fit. Perhaps I was less opinionated and therefore things simply appeared for me to wear. Perhaps there were more hand-me-downs from the many cousins and neighbors. Perhaps my kids, who take after Forrest, are growing much faster than I ever did. Or maybe I’ve just blocked it out.

I suppose it doesn’t matter. Because I am so thankful that it’s no hardship to buy clothes for my kiddos. Well, financially, anyway. Emotionally, it’s two straight days of arguing, nitpicking, and, by the end, pleading with them to just please for the love of God pick out a pair of sandals that fit. There’s a part of me - a very vocal part of me - that gets frustrated at their pickiness, the desire to see so many different options, the rejection of perfectly good clothes because they don’t feel right or fit perfectly.

But then I remember that what I wanted for my kids was a life where they could have choices. The choice to wear clothes that they can run and jump and climb in. The choice to wear styles that I was too shy to wear. The choice to find out what they like for themselves so that they don’t follow blindly after fashion, but rather know who they are and what they like so deep down that peer pressure doesn’t have a chance.

I wish that for myself sometimes. But the other side of that knowing is that my kids immediately become more difficult people. They know what they want, so no, those shoes that pinch their heels aren’t ok. They know who they are, so that frilly, flowery dress that I like so much isn’t going to get much use. And while I find it annoying, I accept that difficulty in them.

So why can’t I accept that difficulty in me? Why do I go out of my way to make sure I never cause an inconvenience to anyone? Why do I wear the shoes in my closet that hurt my feet simply because I can’t seem to admit that I don’t like them that much? Why do I still have pajama pants from 20 years ago when I am perfectly capable of buying new clothes that I actually like?

The other day I was having a conversation with a random person, and like many random people, they told me all the reasons why I was failing at becoming a traditionally published author. She was trying to be helpful, really she was, but she was not coming from a place of expertise or even experience. Afterwards, I cursed myself. Why hadn’t I been more difficult? Why hadn’t I made it uncomfortable? Why hadn’t I been so sure of myself deep down that I verbalized the truth - that I was in no way interested in any critique from a non-expert on a subject that is, at the moment, pretty emotionally charged for me?

I think it’s because I don’t even know where to start saying something like that. But luckily for me, I’ve got three pretty amazing teachers right here in my house. So, even though we’ve got to go shoe shopping tomorrow, I’m going to take a deep breath and maybe learn a thing or two from my very difficult daughters.

Dark Days

I’m researching for a book set in the 1920s here in America this time, and although the sun is shining, the trees are blooming and spring is here, it’s hard not to get bogged down in how dark our past can be. When I used to think of the roaring 20s, I imagined Speakeasies and flappers. But now that I’m really learning about it, I’m seeing the birth pangs of a dozen groups of people all fighting to be free. Not just the women’s suffrage movement or the Harlem Renaissance, which I had at least heard of. But free speech advocates fighting to be allowed to speak out against war, union members demanding to be given safety protections, and people fighting for better health care for women and children.

And, like any struggle, there were those who felt those things were too big of an ask. Now, it feels unthinkable to be imprisoned for speaking out against a war, but many, many people were. The idea that voting for women was a step too far is ludicrous, but it was a fight that took a long, long time. And it was not until yesterday that an anti-lynching law was passed at the federal level. A century too late, you might say.

It makes for depressing reading. But, for me, it also gives context to our own time. Just like now, the technological changes of the previous 50 years had completely reworked society. Imagine being born in 1870, a world of horses and farms, of civil war era cannons and Little House on the Prairie. And then turning 50 in 1920, the roads full of cars, a war fought with planes and chemical weapons and submarines, and the entire country becoming urbanized. Of course people’s heads were spinning.

But the question is what we do when the world is changing so fast we can’t keep track of it? Do we harden ourselves, deciding what was in the past was superior, only seeing the negative in the changes? Or do we look deeper, seeing that the values that have sustained us for millennia - curiosity, self-control, and integrity - are equally relevant no matter how big the changes may be?

Forrest and I often argue about how much to hold people accountable for their behavior. He’s one to say that you have to give people a break, look at the context around them, see how their behavior might make sense. I’m a bit more Pentacostal in my outlook. We have always had sin around us and it has always been hard to step outside our own narrow viewpoints to act with compassion and forbearance. And I think the only way people ever change is to trust them to be adults and hold them to high standards.

The truth is probably in the middle. The world feels scary, chaotic, and new. But I could point to a dozen moments in history that felt exactly the same way. Human beings have always faced challenges and overcome them, sooner or later. The depressing reading I’ve been doing is, in the end, quite inspiring. The world 100 years ago felt much the same. But just like them, if we are willing to extend each other the fierce kindness of justice, we’ll see that this suffering is simply a sign of better days to come.

Makeover!

Hey!

Just a short update to point out some changes I made to the site. (Longer blog post coming tomorrow, I promise!

Now that I have finished my third manuscript, I’m going to update my book progress more often. And that should hopefully give some more opportunities for me to blog when my brain is entirely in book writing mode.

Second, I added a page about our garden. I’m not sure what I’m going to put on it yet, but as this is my page, I wanted a page to talk about it! We’ll see where it goes. Right now I think it’s a blank page filled with Lorem Ipsum and not much else.

Finally, I’m trying a new look to accommodate a slightly more complex website (not really complex at all, yet 100% headache inducing for me!). Hopefully it works.

But, as my amazing therapist always tells me, we can try things out, see how they work, and always change our mind if we need to. Just because we make a decision doesn’t mean it has to be the new set-in-stone way of doing things.

Thank you all for your readership and support, as always!

-Serenity

One Room at a Time

Over the past few years, I’ve been slowly, very slowly, repainting every room in our house. When we moved in, the house was a flip and had been styled to be the least offensive color ever. I was six months pregnant at the time and mostly happy that I didn’t need to do any work to make the place habitable. But the walls were olive and dark beige, and ecru. And it took me ten years to realize that of all the places on earth, our home is the one place where I’m allowed to not want to look at earth tones. (No offense to earth tones. They are so versatile and tasteful and calming. And you never accidentally get a wall that looks like an Easter Egg.)

Now, in all but two rooms, our walls are sunny yellow, and sky blue, and grass green, and yes, flamingo pink. Every time I pick a color and start painting, I pause halfway through and ask myself what I was thinking. And then, when it’s done, I love it.

But there are two final rooms still beige. The first is our TV room. It’s awkward and weird shaped, and mostly, it has a giant hutch full of dishes that will be such a pain in the butt to move. We chose the color months ago, but inertia is holding me back. It will be such a disruption. And it will not be a one-day project. So, I feel I have some excuse.

The second room, is, of course, mine and Forrest’s. It was always going to be the last one painted. Because the kids’ rooms had to come first, and then, well the public rooms are more important. And it’s so annoying to have to move everything, since our room is the waystation for every pile of outgrown clothing, work paraphernalia, and random Amazon boxes.

So, on the one hand, I have inertia about a large, complicated, exhausting process. On the other hand, I have a disregarded space since every other project has been so much more important and urgent and visible.

Whew. And if that isn’t a metaphor for my life right now, I don’t know what is. In the last few months, I’ve finished my third manuscript, sent it out to agents, gotten so many rejections, and spent time regrouping and figuring out what’s next. Self-publishing seems like the best way forward, or at least better than shoving it into a drawer. And so, I’ve spent weeks forcing myself to make one small step forward each day on this process. I have both inertia and disregard because the idea of self publishing feels really hard and a lot like failure. But I keep telling myself that one small step each day is still one step, right?

Make a list of freelance editors to get this manuscript into shape.

Call or contact one and set up an appointment.

Talk to them.

Call another.

Talk to them.

And on and on. Somehow I found myself here. With a signed contract from a freelance editor and yearlong plan to launch the book, really launch it, next spring. And meanwhile, a stack of nonfiction and highlighter to start research on the next manuscript. And still, all of the inertia and disregard and panic-inducing doubts I’ve had all along.

But looking around this colorful house that makes me happy in the middle of the rainy, grey, cold days, I’m reminded that there’s more time than I think. And one room at a time ain’t too shabby as long as I don’t stop before I’m done.

Spring!

I grew up in a place that got a fair amount of snow, where spring sets in so gradually, with small steps each day until finally, finally, sometime around April, the likelihood of a late-winter storm is replaced by sunny days and green grass. Here in the PNW, however, spring sneaks up on us. The grass is green all winter, the plants still growing, and the ground rarely frozen. But suddenly, one day in late February or March, the sun comes out, the air warms up and everything jumps into action.

Yesterday was that day. And every year, those of us who have been hibernating in our hygge-filled homes start to emerge. The bickering children who have had months-long cabin fever are all of a sudden climbing trees, playing in the dirt, and leaving shoes and socks and jackets all over the yard again. Neighbors start running into each other again, chatting and catching up. Even the birds, who never go away and never go hungry around here, start making their presence known.

It’s my happiest time of the year. Yesterday I got to sit outside on an overturned bucket, watching my kids climb higher in a fir tree than I really wanted them to, while Forrest tilled the gardens and talked about the book he’s reading. And tomorrow, I’m going to start some seeds so that when the tulips finish blooming I’m ready to go.

I spend a lot of my life feeling tired. Even as I write this, part of me wants to crawl back onto the couch and just close my eyes for a few minutes. But something about spring draws me back into the world. Even when the world feels so bright and so harsh and still full of fear and pain, there’s transformation around every corner. And those small transformations - from a weedy mess to a freshly tilled garden, from a sullen tween to a red-cheeked, dirt-covered adventurer, from a seed to a sunflower, - those transformations remind me that larger transformations are possible.

This spring feels more fraught than the last few, and that’s saying something. But we’ll get nowhere if we’re forget that our small pieces can add up to a world that is utterly changed, made new by sunshine and digging our hands in the dirt. Our world can get better and we can do our bit to make it so.

Dry Season

Every winter is a long winter here in the grey northwest, and we spend a lot of cozy evenings leaning into the hygge of it all by snuggling and watching nature documentaries. There really is nothing more family friendly than seeing a wolf snap the neck of a snow hare, especially a baby one. I kid, I kid. But I will tell you we only made it through a few episodes of Meerkat Manor before even the bloodthirsty twins couldn’t handle the baby left abandoned in the wilderness overnight. I still don’t know if he ever made it back.

One of the most common themes in these shows, of course, is the animals’ endurance through harsh conditions - storms, bitter cold, drought. And the filmmakers usually bring you right up to the point where you think there is no way that Mama Bear is going to be able to feed her cubs after the late spring blizzard — until the unexpected thaw comes and the rivers are once again teeming with salmon, who we are happy to see sacrificed so those furry little faces can eat their fill.

My favorite of these “brink of death” scenes is when the drought-ridden savannah (or outback, or desert) gets the downpour of rain from a once-a-year storm that heralds the wet season. I don’t know if there’s some sort of documentarian contract or something, but it is always, always signified by a close-up of parched, cracked earth with a single trickle of water flowing over it. Then the camera pans out and you see the trickles multiply, until a torrent water rushes in and life returns to a recently barren landscape.

I love it because my heart thrills every time. I gotta say, that pan-out image of the now rushing flood of water and the returning animals hits me. David Attenborough knows his job well. That seasonality somehow strikes a chord in my own soul. The idea of being completely spent, of pushing myself until all my energy is gone, my creativity completely evaporated. And then, after a spell of feeling completely desiccated, one small trickle of inspiration coming back, heralding a new season of exploration.

I wonder if, as I age, that trickle will stop returning each time. But for now, I am so thankful to be old enough to remember that all I have to do is hold out long enough and realize that sometimes the dry season is simply a reminder to be grateful for the productivity of the past and the expectation of future creativity. Right on the edge of that - when all the possibilities are open - that’s my favorite place to be, because I don’t know where it will lead.

This is a dry season and a hard time. But I’m seeing small streams, growing larger. And I can’t wait to seeing where they end up creating new beauty and new life.