Chocolate and cheese

In my sink, after today's post-school snack, I found chocolate pudding and a pile of cheese graters. I'd been serving these options to my kids absentmindedly...not the cheese graters, the CHEDDAR! Sharp. Never for once admitting it was all about the fat and flavor. You know, chocolate oils and cheeses? Very oily both.

Gourmet in other words, yes that's my interpretation of today's afterschool cooking.

Knitting is my calm lately

I just knit a wrongside row, which is the easier shift when the reverse side is filled with knitted cables and surrounding purls. It's a sweater I'm knitting for myself in one piece, sideways. One of those tasks I keep around to occupy myself during my many dread-filled, "what has life become" moments.

All I can consider lately is what life has become since my newborn never made it home from the hospital, then thrived healthily. I'm left with thoughts and fears with the main theme being that life is not what I expected, or should be. Even projecting such aimlessness onto my children, as in, will life rock them to their core someday? Will they be prepared to handle it?

Of course I say no, because none of us seem to be without struggle, let alone regret...my other pal for this century. Can't look backwards and find a shred of that perfection I once believed in and thrived on. Only wonders as I question every past thought, hope, or action. None of it feels like it's going to settle toward peace again.

I mean, there are the moments. When things fall into line and I know the best I can do is celebrate and savor all the great moments, the ones filled with effort. And create more, ignoring those times in between when I falter. Healing the heart and soul is no easy task, facing the dark truths of life is a journey we all have.

All grown up

Finally! So anyway, fantastic day spent cavorting about town decidedly painting it red. Two boys with haircuts later, we've secured an evening with a dying friend followed by steak grilling, my many hats. Thankfully the universe's lessons are instilling, instead of thumping me over and over in the back of the head, YES, I'm paying attention! But gloomy.

Obscurity

A thousand and one miles deep into obscurity, but happy about it. Fa-fa-fump, and all the songs on the radio are Snow Patrol's lately. That one album that encompasses every last VH-1 almost-be's. Um, not sounding right. The edges of the mirror and her cracks,...

and one birthday late. Just gonna sit here for a bit while I gather my thoughts, pawning half-answers off on my three-year-old, and her questions. Whose is that? Mine? Can I have it, in other words. Simpler to ignore half her sentences.

Until she gets to the root of what she's asking, really though, she's just messing up parts of the basement until I answer. So that's how romance novelists' thoughts are processed. Irregularly.

Schedule

Five o'clock and five-thirty, I must be there to regather my young ones, all played out with dates I arranged just today. Friendships in the making, with mother's full support...their containers. Latin root, continere, to hold together. Reflections of themselves, their worlds seen in others, a gracious exchange.

Words, words in staccato, I know I know. Still seeking that free space where I soared above all, plucking from the fruit trees all that would serve me, listening in between. Where the soul arises of its own doing, the not-doing place, the arising without acting.

It's just. Such open forgiveness and allowing clears the space, and the sounds are suggested...the words its translation. Rudolph Steiner and his eurhythmy, where consonants and vowels suggest the course. And all we have to do is wait and receive, finding gratitude for its obedient way.

A static phase

Pacing my way through a series of days filled with normal. School returns just around the corner, excited by the new rituals and demands ahead. For entertainment, reading the thoughts of fellow empty nesters, an endless supply of been there and survived it. Some, anyway.

Planning ahead for seven years later, and then the culmination that will arrive in fifteen (last graduation). Am I prepared, have I celebrated every moment? Backstepped and rechecked, then plowed further ahead?

Who will I be when the last one leaves my nest...someone who took less for granted, who lived full-time in "believe in your best life" land.

I found horror

Not to be exhibitionistic, the worst crime forced upon Americans they hum, but these past years have shaped me into who I currently am. Not to confuse myself with what I shall be, but am not. I want to be that perfect mother who never screws up, who has expertly sidestepped exhibiting her life as from shambles.

But I've been there, raced there even just to see what I'd like,...if. My life was different than it is today, which is recovering from shambles. Got that? My life, in its current state, is recovering from a shamble-filled existence. Portrayed also online, somewhere else.

Won't say where.