I'm working on it.

It is a warm and windy day, sunny and green. The wire grass in the yard is knee high, and twenty or thirty different butterflies are flitting across the tips of the late summer wild flowers that have mixed themselves sweetly into the storybook blades. The sky is blue, a bright blue, and dotted across with cottony clouds, these brought in quickly with the storms from the south sea. It's a fairy-tale kind of day, a go to the creek kind of day, a read books and eat ice cream with your kids kind of day. It's a big cliche, for all the right reasons, the kind of day described by a thousand writers of a thousand happy chapters, with a thousand happy words.

It is not the kind of day you begin to think about your mother dying.

Except it is.

Today is the day I began to think about my mother dying.

There are a thousand happy, encouraging, look-on-the-bright-side, stay positive kind of cliches to go along with this cliche of a day, the day you hear the word cancer.

But my heart is not at that stop yet.

And today, as the wind blows warm around me, I feel cold and sad, my heart cold and sorrowful at what awaits.

All that awaits my poor, dear, mama.

I don't write much anymore. There is no time to do it. No time to be still and center any thoughts about any one subject.  And there is just no one subject rolling around either. Life in this present appears as a jumble of thoughts, needs, wishes, hopes, sorrows, frustrations and demands with no time to adequately address any of them.

Not long ago, I typed out an email to myself about how I really feel.  Therapy for free, if you will.  Like the rest of this random blog where I randomly write random things that mean little to anyone, maybe even little to me, but somehow need to be freed from the inside parts.  And even though I wrote it down, I can't bring myself to actually place it in the light; somehow I feel it needs hiding still, in case someone else, someone wiser or more knowledgeable or happier or better should see it and ink it up with red pen.

This has been the longest year of my life. And so far, the hardest year.  Harder than that seventh year of marriage when we both realized that we'd forever committed to another imperfect person.  Harder than the years when we were working through what marriage meant to our relationships with our parents.  Harder than the year when I could not get hired, even to sell lipstick, and ended up on the couch knitting in a bathrobe.  It has been so hard.

And it continues to be hard.

I'm ok with that.

But what I really hate is the lying.

Because that's what I've become.  A big liar.

People ask how we are.  Some don't really mean it in that sense.  They mean it in the well-mannered conversation way, like 'hi'.  Some don't really mean it at all. They just ask because it's so much a practiced part of Sunday greetings that they can't break the habit.  Some really do mean it, but then, they are in the same place, in a jumble of life's crazy and they don't have time to hear anyway.

So I lie.
I smile and I say we are doing great, counting down the weeks, hanging in there, getting along, a little tired, but still going strong.
And then they smile back and pat me on the back or the shoulder or give me a quick hug and say how glad they are for us and walk on.

I do this over and over and over and over and over.

And that's not the real story.

In the grand sense of things, we *are* totally fine. We are making it. We are pushing on and getting through. It's what we do.  It's what we will do. We will get through all of this.  There is grace, big enough and strong enough to pull us across to the other side.

But it's not the whole story.

What do you say to the persons who demand things of you when you can barely get through the basics? How do you explain to your friends that you just can't make the play date or the coffee date or do the extra demonstration or teach them how to sew - just not right now? How do you explain that you are so exhausted that merely getting ready for the one hour ballet class each week is nearing the impossible? How do you explain that you don't want to deal with any serious conflict right now, that you just want to rest and get through to the end? And WHY, why, can't anyone see this, sense it on their own and just get it? Can nobody see, can nobody even imagine the toll these last months have taken?

So far, it's like nobody sees. Or maybe nobody wants to. Or maybe we are all so caught up in the hard of our own lives that we've no time for the hard in anyone else's. Or maybe I'm whining. Or maybe this is just the way it goes between now and the stepping off of forever.

I don't really have an answer.
At this point, I'm head down, shoulder to the wheel, pushing to get to the finish.
It could be in sight.
But after the events of this last twelve months, I have no faith that it really is in sight.
And I fear that what I think is the end is really only a slight pause in the difficulty.

And what of it?
There is nothing to be done if it is.

So I keep smiling. And keep lying.
And make this secret post the only hint of the truth that I'm feeling.
It feels a little safe.
Especially since I don't write much anymore.

There is sun.
Finally after so many months of
dark, grey, cold, wet, drab.
And there are birds.
Their chirps stun me.
Marvelous.

The ground outside is still wet from last night's storm.
But the dampness, warmed by the sunlight smells good and clean and new.
Fresh.

The bright baby green leaves
budding everywhere echo that same good, clean, new, freshness.

Spring.
Spring light.
Spring color.
Spring sound.
Spring smell.

Spring. It is really that.
A leaping - a leaping forward.
A leaping toward the good, the clean, the new.
A leaping toward the fresh.

It is this that I've waited for.
Through the long autumn months and the dim winter light.

Out of the blue, a gift. A longed for, hoped for, wished for, dreamed of, gift. A surprise. Two little pink lines. And then two more lines. And then two more. Because for whatever reason, the first test is never believable. Neither is the second, but as they say, third time's the charm.

Ten weeks went by. Ten secret weeks of silent excitement.  Ten weeks of whispers after bedtime, talks of tiny sleepers and diapers and little hands and feet.  Ten weeks of secret list making, names and dates and ideas and plans.  Ten weeks of smelling everything, eating less, needing spice and feeling sick.

The night of my younger daughter's fourth birthday, we knew.

An emergency trip to the obstetrician confirmed the bad. And we were sent home to wait. To wait.

Nobody talks about what happens to you when you lose a baby.
No one tells you what will happen.
No one tells you about the utter awfulness of it.

There were some vague instructions from the nurses, and hugs and many quiet 'so very sorry' whispers, and one ugly, abrasive, "I can't help you, have a nice day" from a member of the frontline staff, and that's it.

We went home into the unknown, an unknown that turned out to be dark and hard and painful, physically painful, emotionally painful, utterly awful, and secret.  Secret like the first ten weeks.  This time a secret sorrow, that time a secret joy.

Our baby died and we watched life go on around us.  Two different friends had babies that week, and we could see their newborn pictures in our news feeds, tiny little hands and feet, tiny little baby sleepers, tiny little diapers.  Another pregnant friend complained about her growing stomach, all the while my own seemed to grow smaller and more empty with every minute's passing.

On Sunday, two people stood next to me and asked me if we were trying to have a baby. Was there anything coherent in my stammered reply: "no, not really, well, not right now, I mean, we would love a baby, but no, I guess not really now".  And in my mind, 'bite down hard. don't cry. smile hard'. So that's what I did.

Our children do not know yet. When they ask, "Mommy, why are you crying?" we just reply with a vagueness of our own: "Mommy's heart is just sad, honey.  Sometimes grown-ups have sad days, too".

The other day the words came out, out loud, to a friend. And that night to another. They cried for me. They knew, too. They knew the utter awfulness, too.

Our baby died.

My dear friend sent this poem, along with her love and prayers and the kind of hope that only comes from knowing the truth of life.  It's page has been open since she sent it; I read it and read it and read it.

Our baby died, and is gone, undiminished, to the other shore. We know the One who stands there, receiving those lives, receiving our tiny gift, our little undeserved surprise, the never-dying-soul we knew for a secret ten weeks, and so we have hope.

...the one when circumstances make clear the necessity of change.
...the one when nobody's guessing what comes next.
...the one when doubt becomes impossible.
...the one when you finally get it.

heart. break. ing.

In the end, it's all ok.

Right now though, it's time to shake the dust off our feet and move on.

Still working it out.  Still working on it.

It is only Tuesday afternoon, but I already feel like I'm running out of time in the week. Sick children and ballet practice, overdue library books and overflowing laundry baskets, dental appointments and language assessments, races and grocery trips - these things seem endless. And I can't imagine what it would be like if we did more than one extra-curricular activity each.

What happens to the time?

...

Math takes up a lot of room. There are lots of pieces to math. Lots of worksheets. Lots of counting blocks. Lots of money. Lots of rulers and shapes and flashcards and erasers and balances and clocks and cubes and charts and stuff. It takes up a lot of room.

There are lots of pieces to school in general. Lots of pens and pencils and erasers and markers and crayons and colored pencils and glue and scissors and paper (and lots of kinds of paper) and folders and pictures and books and more flash cards and more worksheets and rings and binders and more folders. It takes up a lot of room.

And science and history and art and music and geography. These things take up a lot of room.

And we don't even have a real globe yet. (Ours is a blow up model that often sees time spent as a ball.) Or a real microscope, or safety goggles, or a piano.

Also, in addition to all the pieces, these things take up a lot of mental space.

I have long ago forgotten all the reasons why the a and the i and the a and the y say "aaaaa". This is also true for why the e and the a say "eeeee" sometimes and "eh" others. These reasons are filed away in the dark storage room of my getting-older-by-the-minute brain, and it is hard to find the folders, dust them off and recall the facts I used to know.

I have long ago forgotten the names of the properties (all but the commutative) and the rules for where you are supposed to start drawing the four and whether or not it has a square or a triangle as its base. I can't remember what order I learned all my facts in, and if I liked it or if it was beneficial or if it was destructive to my overall comprehension of mathematics. It is all filed away, in the same room as the phonics and grammar rules, albeit a different drawer.

How does one keep up with all of these facts? There are a lot of facts to know. There are a lot of facts to remember, and then there are the reasons behind the facts. This, I've discovered, is the beauty of the teacher's manual.

I have decided today that teaching multiple subjects to multiple ages is hard. After three years of homeschooling, I now understand the joyful existence of co-ops and academies. OHHHHH, so *that's* why you add that one-more-trip-out-of-the-house to the weekly activities list: so someone else can keep up with the science facts.

...

Thank God for the sunshine and the warmer air. The trees are still missing a lot of leaves, but the air smells like spring and the light is finally staying longer in the evenings. I like how it feels to have the doors open in the daytime. The birds are chirping nearly all day, and their songs make for a happy energy.

Soon, soon, soon, I keep telling myself, that soon it will be spring - lovely, color-filled, sweet smelling spring. And then summer, hopefully a long, warm, sunny one, spent by the ocean with these fast-growing girls of ours.

...

Last night, we cooked dinner for two nights. That means tonight I don't have to cook. That is a blessing, a huge, warm hug of a blessing. It removes so much stress from the day to have one less thing to do. The dishwasher will still have to be unloaded (for the third time today) and re-loaded, but that is so small in the grand scheme of things. And I think it also makes the dinner taste even better, to know that it comes with little more effort than warming up a chop or two.

As I sit here listening to the girls sing and color together, all of us waiting for the man of the house (and let's face it, the hero to each of us) to arrive, life seems more manageable than it did fourteen graphs ago. Perhaps it's the coffee.

It's summertime.  The end of it, for sure, but still summer.  My Google tells me that the astronomical summer  in the Northern Hemisphere doesn't end until September 21st.  So I know, because it's Google, that it is still summertime.

I also know it's still summertime because of how lazy our days are ... We get up, we play, we eat, we play, we snack and run and rest and read and make a mess and go to the store and the park and the beach and the pool and have last-minute-picnic-dinners downtown where we can look for carriages and ride the ferry and stop at the candy store and stomp in the fountains and laugh at the stars.

Summer-time.

The changing light hasn't come yet.  It will soon, and the days will become short and fast and exhausting, and the warmth will fade and the cold will come and then it will be gray for a bit and every day will feel like a scheduled chore.

And every day of the dark and grey I will think of the summer, and the summer time, and the summer times, and I will long for it and wait for it and hope it comes early.

And then, one day, the light will change again.  And I will see it.  And it will be spring.  And there will be days and days of longer, brighter, lighter times.  And then, the sun will wake one day in June and it will be that time, this time, one more time, again.

The dearest husband has taken the dearest children out to pick up diapers and bread, the staple items of our daily lives, and to let the small ones wear off their afternoon naps at the indoor play area near our favorite Target.  It's a gift today, though normally, after a day in-house with the ittys, I am more than happy to head out in the evenings for errands.  Right now, though, I am just extra thankful for the moments of still and the dimness of this room.

My head is a wreck.  There are multiple ways to take that, but in this case it's mostly just a two-fold meaning.  My head is a wreck of pain and twitching, the latter being a new symptom that goes along with the monster aches that seem to come more and more frequently these days.  My head is a wreck of lists - the kind of lists that organize what needs to be done and what's coming next, the kind of lists that are usually in order and neat, the kind of lists that have somehow become a monster ache of their own, growing longer and longer with less completion.  Neither of the wrecks does anything to lessen the other.  (At what point in life is it appropriate to hire a personal assistant?)

And it's spring.  My favorite time of year.  Everything here is blooming and beautiful.  The ocean even seems new.  I only want to be out, seeing, breathing, loving, enjoying the time and the new light that spins golden shadows later and later and later into the evening hours.

The physical ache is stifling that.  It's having an effect.  Affecting life and living, forcing hours spent in a dark room with cold compresses and mounds of ibuprofen (thirty-two-hundred-milligrams a day, plus the in-between spots filled with Tylenol is a. lot. of. Motrin) that only dull the pounding.  Now with the added twitching, I'm not sure what to think.  Maybe time to stop self-dosing and see a professional M.D.

I hate going though, because they always have to stick you with something.

Pressing on.

It's a breezy day here.  The sun is in and out of the clouds which are thick and grey and heavy with coming rain, and the wind is moving them and the trees in every direction.  The light is nice, not too bright, not too golden, not too clear.  It's hard to explain, but everything is easier to see today.

Girl-the-first is sitting on the loveseat in our school/playroom reading book after book after book.  She can't read all the words yet.  But she loves going through all her favorite ones and finding the words she knows by sight: the, a, and, is, this, on, to, in.  She finds them and runs over to me with her small finger marking the exact spot on the page - "Mama, close your eyes!  Now, look, Mama! It's 'and'!"  I like this. I like it a lot.

Girl-the-second is sleeping.  Yes, she is.  She is sleeping soundly in her own room, in her own crib, in her pink sleep sack with no bloomers on.  An afternoon nap.  After sleeping all night last night.  Well, from midnight or so to seven-thirty.  It's incredible.  And restful.  I feel a little sleepy myself.  It's almost as if getting those straight seven hours have made my body and mind suddenly conscious of how much they've missed in the last fifteen months. They both want to shut down and cuddle with a pillow for a few.  They are greedy for more slumber.

As I type this, the pages for next week's kindergarten classes are rolling off my printer.  I'm scanning them ahead of time, and am so thankful for these minutes to do this.  Just a little bit of preparation makes it all so much easier.  I feel like this about most things, but especially school.  It is so much better when my lessons are prepped in advance.  If only I could get this far ahead with my dinners, laundry and grocery shopping.

Aside from the general state of the house (toys everywhere, on everything, under everything, in everything, laundry waiting to be folded, dishes waiting to be put away, and one persistent cobweb on the chandelier), things feel good, balanced, calm.  It is a good feeling.

So many times what I know to be true doesn't translate to feeling true.  And when it does, when what I know to be true also feels true, oh how nice the minutes are.

It is a good reminder to me of perspective.  Despite the hard - despite the sad - despite what can feel like a forever of struggle - life is so, so, so good.  It is better than what we deserve it to be.  I am thankful, filled with gratitude for this goodness.

Oh. Yes.

Last night, very, very late last night, after a near-death showdown with child-the-younger over whether or not she would fall asleep in her bed, (she did finally, but alas, only stayed put until four), the boy and I managed to enjoy the chicken we'd been trying to cook for a few days.

It's hard for us to cook grown-up meals with any regularity, especially those like the ones we used to prepare back in the pre-parent days of our lives - meals with grand and sometimes expensive ingredients, cooked with special techniques and lots of wine. We manage it every once in a while, but spaghetti is seen at our table much more frequently than Linguine con le Vongole (although we actually did prepare that for Christmas last year and it was amazing).

All that aside, we finally, after returning the first, smelly package, had the chicken, the Pimentón Dulce, the Pimentón Picante, the flaked chili, and the citrus. Both girls were in bed. The grill was hot, the chicken marinated, the Stella, cold, and the football, well, it was not going so well, but what can you do? Anyway, the dinner made up for the ballgame.

Like the day Camelot fell, or the day mankind got high, or the day the music died, I will always remember where I was when it happened. I'm talking about the big East Coast (represent) Quake of '11 (that's Oh-One-One, y'all). Not that wimpy mess out in Colorado. What was that anyway? A two point one?

Anyway, back to my story. This is for posterity.

It was an ordinary day in Savannah, Georgia. The kids were up, lunched, schooled and cleaned. The kitchen was a mess, crumbs from the sixteen different types of food I'd tried to feed my one-year-old for lunch littered the counter and the floor around the stove. The laundry I'd been working on for the last month, week, day, along with a random menagerie of toys, lay in small piles around the old dining room, while even more toys and dirty socks (my one-year-old likes to carry them around in her mouth during the day, but that's another story) found scattered homes throughout the living room. I still needed a shower after the two-diaper-change poop incident, and the kids were sort of sharing a toy with one another in the playroom.

"Finally," I thought as I set my lukewarm water down on the desk. "I can finally get this space organized." I sat down at the worn chair, pulled the trash can closer to me and began sorting through the stack of mail and miscellaneous paper.

And then it happened.

My phone, which was sitting on the desk next to me, began shaking. At first I didn't know what to do. I glanced at the kids and then back at the still shaking phone. It made a surprisingly annoying sound as it knocked against the wood. In that moment, I decided. I grabbed the phone, hit the slider bar and knew immediately exactly what was happening.

It was my breaking news alert from the Washington Post, letting me know that I had just experienced an earthquake.

When I look back on it now, it all makes sense. The crumbs on the kitchen floor, the scattered clothes and toys, the pacing cat, the unhappy sounds coming from the girls as they struggled to hold onto the same toy, their small hands just barely able to keep it supported ... it was the quake. And all I can say is thank God we are all safe.

I mean, "We all almost died."**

This afternoon I learned that our friends, two people we love and have spent many good times with, are ending their marriage.

I don't want to gossip about it, or debate the faults. I'm just sad.

Sad for them. Sad for their children. Sad for their futures without one another. Sad for the memories of the good times that will be hard to remember now. Sad that it's really happening.

Sad that it's at the end.

Things here are hard. It's how life is. And the end of a marriage, no matter the ins and outs or the whys or hows, is a terrible rending of what was made to be one, a whole, together. It matters not if the hearts leave as friends or foes; the leaving is still a leaving, a tearing, a pulling apart of what was once meshed with hopes of forever.

My heart hurts for them.

Press on.

Blogger just erased the three paragraphs I'd written. I think that's probably a sign that I didn't need to write it. I'm starting over below, with less venom, I hope.

Two days ago:

This blog started out a long time ago as a random place for personal therapy. A place I could come and work stuff out on my own, without the pressure of a time table or the need to do it on some kind of schedule. And I guess it is still that. A random place for random thoughts.

My sweet, totally precious little baby girl will not sleep. It seems to me as if there was a time when she did sleep. But I could be making that up. I mean, it's been so long since I slept like a regular person, I'm sometimes not sure what I'm remembering and what is wishful, wishful day-dreaming.

Amid what seems to be one of those 'terrible, horrible, no good, very bad' days, when everything that could be a wreck actually is a wreck, the sound of a big sister working so hard to make a little sister laugh, and the successive sound of that little sister laughing at her big sister's efforts is a much needed gift.

This could've been a post about my failed, "too-cool-for-east-coast-sense-we're-from-cali-y'all" diaper bag purchase. And maybe one day I will post about that ... I do after all, have a tag for things I hate. But in a springtime fueled effort to focus on the positive, I thought I could rave for a bit about something I love. And the latest in the long (yet somehow not nearly touted enough) list of those things is my brand new, finally got it right, Skip*Hop diaper bag.

It's hard to be a good mother. I know some people say it's not hard, that it just comes naturally, but I disagree. No matter how much you love your children, no matter how long you waited for them, being a good mother does not come naturally.

"Are you sad, Mama?" she asked.

"No," I replied. "Mama is just thinking about things."

"Oh," she said. "I'm thinking about things, too."

"What are you thinking about?" I asked her.

"Well, Mama," she said. "I'm thinking about you."

"Me?"

"Yes, Mama. I'm thinking about how kind you are and how good you are and how good you are at playing outside with me."

The jazz is pretty good. It's left over from the seventies, and tonight, it is the background for blogging. We're having 'movie night' - sans picnic, which is our usual accompaniment to this kind of entertainment. A regular movie night includes pizza and ice cream at our little play table in the playroom. Alas, tonight, we ate a boring old dinner at the regular table. Still, the Aristocats hasn't lost its charm, and O'Malley and crew seem to be making up for the absence of Little Caesar's and vanilla dish.