We Do What We Can and Can What We Do

I remember when I first started blogging.  Nora was about three, and after she would make her last insomniac toddler protest, I'd pour myself a generous glass of Chardonnay and type away in my bed, sipping and sorting the words. Nora is almost 13 now, and she goes by Morti.  He goes by Morti, I should say. And next month marks year two of sobriety for me.  Boring, laborious, sober sobriety.  Necessary sobriety.  Did I mention boring?  As badly as I want to be one of those people who can have a glass of red with my steak or some sort of umbrella'd blender drink while sitting by the pool with her tanned friends, I'm not.  I'm a "lose my purse and fall down the stairs" kind of drinker.  A "just one more" after she's already had seven kind of drinker.  I wish I were a polite drinker, someone who enjoyed the taste and didn't become obnoxious in the restaurant.  It's not that I couldn't hold my liquor.  Oh boy, could I hold liquor....

When I think back to the happiest day in my life...this is it.  It's about five years ago on the farm.  Nora is pushing four.  I couldn't tell you what we did that day.  I didn't even know then that this was the happiest day of my life.  But it was.  I know that now.  That's the trouble with the happiest days of your life.  You can't tell that they are when you're in the middle of them, but when you look back, all the boredom or hunger or conflict dissolves and all that's left is this:  her arm reaching up around your neck and the light of her eyes that you hope no amount of tears will ever put out. My sister told me she is practicing two things:  contentment and self-control. I'm working on those, too. Thank you and this will do.

 1.  Granted I didn't plan for the impossible.  This might be why I survived it.  Had I prepared, I never would have left the farm, never would have packed the vintage green bulldog planter that belonged to Ila, the little embroidered chicken magnet on the fridge, never would have left the potatoes and onions in the dirt.  "Will you please take what's there and eat it when it's ready?  Don't let it just grow and..."  Lynn looked at me, nodding.  Farmers don't say a lot.  He'd never plant 1200 acres of seed only to watch the brown canvas of dirt rise green, crest golden, dry, freeze, fall back invisible into the dirt once again, would never just walk away from a field full of seeds. "We'll be sure it gets harvested." I have walked away from three gardens in my life, not knowing that I wouldn't be there for the harvest. Even so, I don't regret planting them.  We can't live thinking we might as well not do a damn thing beca...

Let the sun brew your tea.  Sip it later sitting on the porch with frost resistant pansies enjoying your company. Teach your daughter how to dig a hole and plant blackberries, so she can hope for some sweetness down the road, too. And when you find Ila's garlic, which you'd planted in your mother's garden two years ago before you left for Georgia, give thanks that sometimes your past follows you wherever you go. Marvel at light. And how the seeds are lifted into their form under it. Believe that this is happening to you, too. How do they know to do this?  How can I become myself this easily?  Under the light. Let clothespins hide in the pocket of your apron and your hair go crazy in the wind. Let slow.  Let sun.  Let wind.  Let light and shadow. Accept the gift of help from your parents and the dirt hauled from the family farm to fill your raised beds. Let her run barefoot as she has each year when you walk the...

From 30 thousand feet above the earth, it’s easy to feel as if you are only observing your life.  You see the rooftops and the tiny orange rectangles sitting side by side that you know must be school buses, filled that morning with children carrying peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and dulled pencils and homework they begrudgingly finished the night before.  And there are the parents in their desks that you can’t see, typing and calling and moving money from one pocket to another, but rarely their own. It’s easy this far above the ground to regret that you could only have one child – not because you are greedy, but because you love the one you do have so much, you wish you could give her the one thing she wants most – companionship.  And you think of your own sisters, how growing up with them had somehow prepared you to play well with others in adult life.  But even then, sometimes you still act like a jerk. That’s probably normal, and something, from 3...

Imagine digging out, pen in hand, the writing shovel, unearthing bad decisions and tossing them on the compost pile and the page. If you've always used writing as a way to process, but you can't process yet, do you stop writing?  No.  Never.  Never stop.  So I process through practice.  I grow through going.  I lift by letting. I have felt that in order to write to you, my friends, I would need to go back and explain EVERYTHING.  But you don't want to read about every misplaced key on the piano, though I feel like I should explain, perhaps, one chord.  How about A major (mistake)? Mistake.  I took wrongly.  I missed taking. Ex-plain.  I made the mistake of moving from the plains.  There.  An ex-plain-ation.   I was misplaced of my own volition.  Let the finger pointing begin, standing in front of the mirror pressing the tip to your own heart.  No one else but you. Where do you hold the disappointme...