I knew one of my daughters had a live reading last night. She’d won an award at the local arts council and they’d be recording her performance for the radio station. I put it in the calendar but when the hour came, I simultaneously lost track of time and somehow assumed it started later than it did. When I realized my hour, I blew out of work and met Chris in the church parking lot to scoop her up. We arrived a half-hour late, only to find them locking up. It was a quick reading, guys. Sorry.

Just then, an elderly lady walked in. They greeted her by name as she yelled (seriously) I thought it started at 7! What is wrong with me?! The kind attendant suggested my daughter read to her, and he began to unpack his recording equipment. The woman sat, enraptured as my baby shared the tale of the summer when she was injured by our new puppy and had to visit the emergency room, bringing special attention to her memory of the doctor with a voice that boomed like thunder.

A staff member came out of the office and by the end of the reading, there were three of us. I apologized profusely, to everyone from my baby girl to the arts council staff to God to my husband. I’ve been quite busy at work during a potential career transition, and apparently there just wasn’t enough room in my foggy brain for Friday night at the arts council. Everyone was gracious, especially my daughter… it was the perfect audience, Momma. I wasn’t even nervous.

I can keep a lot of plates spinning, but only for so long. The crash is sometimes small, sometimes loud, always heavy, a kind reminder that I should not attempt to do it all.

I’ve written about this before and I can attest that it still rings true, five years and five thousand miles later… I want to be a lady of the locker room.

No matter the gym, the locker room is always where I learn the most. Those women carry confidence, courtesy, and self-possession in the purest of forms. Let it be so with me.

Last night I wrote with the window open, sipping the favored sparkling water a friend brought me from Anchorage. My polish lingered from a recent slow Saturday, when I let a daughter paint my toes. The puppy slept and did not bark at the moose. The sun stayed out ‘til bedtime, clouds pink and mountains aglow.

The world, mine and yours and everyone’s everywhere, seems to be trying its best to heal, one day at a time.

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, Speak to us of Children.
And he said:
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

Kahlil Gibran, 1923

Happy birthday, Isaiah Jane & Honor Rose. Thank you for coming through me, and for pausing to spend these wild eleven years. I take them not for granted.

It’s the night before the twins’ eleventh birthday, and I have a captive audience as we gather around the table for taco salad night.

I tell them about the miracle of going full-term with twins, during a season we could not afford for me not to work.

I tell them about the night spent in triage, convinced I was in labor after my water broke, only to find out it was pee and a stomach bug.

I tell them about the morning of their birth, about how I’d asked my mom, their Sunshine, not to come to the hospital just yet because only Chris could come into the operating room. I tell them that as I’m wheeled out into the hall, back to my room with babies on my chest, there is my mom. Sunshine had been waiting the entire time, just in case Momma needed her mama.

The walking distance between my car and the gym feels too far and too cold this morning. My car feels too soft, too warm. Going inside to move my body on a Monday is arguably the most important accomplishment I’ll achieve this week… and we’re throwing a birthday party for all three daughters this weekend, so that’s saying something.

Scenes from a weekend lived well.