These Are Not Real Problems

These aren't problems, real or otherwise. It's not a problem to have a house full of people trying to help you. It's not a problem to be surrounded by family. But for some reason, yesterday, it felt like it was.

Maybe it was the days of rain.
Maybe it was an absence of down time.
Maybe it was hormones or the moon or some sort of terrible, but thankfully brief curse.
Maybe it was because sometimes I am a baby.

What I know is that life is short and chaotic and full of people and things that I love. And today I have to do a better job keeping myself together because really, there is no need for bad attitudes.

And the sun is shining.

 Happy May. I'm glad today is Friday.

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Lasts

Outside my window it is gray. Outside my window it is dreary. Outside my window it is cold, the wet cold that stays clinging to my feet for hours after coming inside.

Despite my best efforts to get make myself get out of these doors every day, today it did not happen- home late from work, a stop at the grocery store, and all the sudden it's time to make dinner.  And even though each day is getting longer, the dark still comes too soon.

I find myself wanting summer.

But then I remember that summer is months away. And that when summer comes, it will mean that my kids are bigger, taller, smarter, wiser than they are right now.

They will do new things and know new things. They will have experienced more and have changed in so many small ways.

I can't want summer. I must want right now.

***

It's easier to remember firsts. First laughs, first steps, first words. First sleep-over. First time down the big slide. It's harder to remember lasts because you don't usually know when they are happening.

One day, I will kiss away the hurt on Gus's elbow, and it will be the last time he comes to be with tears in his eyes, still believing in that particular breed of magic.

But I won't know that it is.

One afternoon will be the last afternoon that Sena steals away to live among her dolls, talking and singing with them as the rest of the house slips into evening. But I won't know that either.

I won't know which night was the last night they woke me up to crawl into my bed, the last time Arlo nurses, the last time he jumps into the bath fully clothed. I won't know that I'm washing their hair for them for the last time, cutting up their dinner, handing them a sippy cup of juice. I may have experienced something beautiful and utterly ordinary for  the very last time today, but I don't know it. And chances are, I never will.

So I'll let summer take her time. I won't rush her, and I'll let winter have his due. This winter marks the end of dozens of things that one day I will miss, but which I will never get to say good bye to.

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Starting/ Changing/ Embracing

I've spent quite a few hours over the past couple of days deep in my own thoughts. Thinking about how I spend my time, and my money, and my resources. Thinking about the things in my life that bring me joy, the things that burn through hours of my day, giving me nothing in return, thinking about the things that take from me, leave me with just a little less.

I feel like I might be about to start a journey, and my thoughts keep returning to it over and over again. What do I love? How do I get more of what I love and remove the mounds of mediocre?

The truth is, there is very, very little bad in my life, but there are stretches of discontented ordinary. So I am thinking and mediating on how to make the ordinary a little more beautiful, filled with more love.

And as I think my way through, I know that my first step is identifying the things I love. What is it that I want more of?

I love playing with my kids.

I love when Tom makes me laugh.

I love friends who make me laugh.

I love drinking coffee with my mom and sisters.

I love having people over to my house.

I love taking my kids to new places.

I love when my house is 85% clean.

I love when I cook a really, really good dinner.

I love singing in church.

I love book club.

I love being on the beach.

I love talking to strangers.

I love dancing.

I love walking. 

I love reading.

I love writing. 

I love St. Mary's College and Ocracoke.

I love not too sweet cocktails. 

I love when I take a picture I'm proud of.

I love looking at old pictures. 

I love plants.

I love screened-in porches.

I love when people think I'm funny.

I love cook-outs.

I love frizzy, summer hair.

It feels so good to think about the things I love the most in this world. The list could go on and on and on. These are the things I want to fill my life with, and I want to work on removing the things that don't make me very happy (ordering pizza when I'm too lazy to cook, zoning out on my phone, half-done piles of laundry).

I'm excited to embrace the things I love. This could be a year of some sort of big changes for me, and it feels really good and exciting.

My friend Maggie sent me a link to these guys. And although they are a little too......something, for my taste, they have sent me to really good places in my head. My own version of minimalism might be a slightly more bohemian, Jesus conglomeration, but this is a good start. Thanks Maggie, for inspiring me to think some of these thoughts.

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Sometimes I'm Restless

Sometimes I get a little restless. I start thinking that there is something out there that I want, something that I don't already have.

I think that I'd find it, if only I'd leave, if only I'd pack my babies and my mister, and head to some place new.

I've read that people with names like mine feel torn between family and adventure. We are homebodies with gypsy hearts.

This new year has brought desire for newness, for change, and so I've spent hours in my head, not embracing what I have and where I am, but wanting to go.

And then I remind myself, that there is no community better than my dad and mom and sisters. And I remind myself that these bay shores are my home. This town might not have some of the things that I think I want--wine bars, coffee shops, farm to table restaurants-- but it has absolutely everything I need. It has space for my children to run just a little wild. It has brackish water. It has my childhood wrapped in it, as it wraps my children too.

I'm trying to refocus my day dreams, think not of leaving, but how to make this place more like the ones I imagine I want to be.  Maybe I can be the change, or maybe my fancy will pass, as they usually do, and I'll take my kids back to the empty winter beach to look for drift wood and sharks teeth, and we'll come back with sand in our boots, and clean up for a dinner to be eaten with a gaggle of sisters. 

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2014- Embrace

As I said, I don't see this year as a year of huge change, and I'm hopeful that it won't be a year of huge challenge. And while I have lists and lists of goals and ideas, mostly I want to embrace all that surrounds me.

I want to embrace my children and my husband, my family and my job.
I want to embrace moments and feelings, friends and experiences.
I want to embrace my health and my happiness.
I want to live it fully, but not frantically.
I want to embrace slowing down, and embrace speeding up.
At the end of it all, these precious days of this one and only year in front of me, I want to know that I did it well, that I loved those around me with my whole heart, that I gave and that when I needed to, I was willing to receive.

I think sometimes I fool myself into thinking that embracing what is in front of me is resignation. But this year, I will let myself embrace things as they are at that very minute, and know that it doesn't mean that I can't work to change them, that I can't seek to improve.
I will embrace the dark circles under my eyes.
I will embrace Arlo's four o'clock cry session.
I will embrace the size of my pants and the dingy wall to wall carpet.
I will embrace our debt and my downfalls.
I will embrace it all and love it all because it is my only right now.

And I promise I will stop with all the New Year's planning and dreaming now and get on with the embracing and living.

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