Today's gift

Did you ever have one of those days, where one bad thing happening seems to blot out all of the good?

I'm not going to share about the problem, er, challenge of today.  Here's everything else I somehow overlooked from within my anger.

This amazing little box arrived in the mail, from a long time far away friend, out of the blue.  How sweet to know I am still in her heart.  She is forever in mine.

Molasses, cinnamon and apples.....folded into sourdough pancakes for breakfast.  Yum.

Planting sweet pea seeds with Bella and Katy.  I can almost smell the blossoms.  I love gardening w/ my girls.  Katy said "Mom, you look pretty," when she took this.  Wow.

Strawberry rhubarb pie anyone? Only a few more months.

It really was a good day.  My husband came home, said "What smells so good?" (and he meant me, as well as dinner) and gave me so much love.  Perhaps tomorrow I will do better at returning it.

Rivers

The Gallatin, near Cameron Bridge, Fall 2009

When I was a little girl, "The River" was a mythical place that edged the boundaries of my family's small existence.  There were two rivers actually, the Missouri and the Musselshell, but one only ever spoke of "the" River, as if it were the centering force of the universe.  I loved the sound of the water flowing.

The River (usually the Gallatin because it is so near my home, but sometimes the Yellowstone, or the Madison as well) is still a place of magic to me.  I never know what I will encounter there.  

Once in the springtime, Bella found a snake hatch.  A whole rocky slope covered with slithering aliveness.  We were both entranced at the abundance of renewal and she was quick to pick up one baby Garter after another and utter "Isn't it cute Mommy?"  Cute, well, maybe, amazing definitely.  

Another time the dead and bloated carcass of a large dog floated where our dog often chases after his own splashes.  Quiet gasps and "Oh no, that's so sad," from both my girls.  We couldn't stop looking.  

In the winter once we discovered no matter how hard we hurled rocks in a certain iced over pool, the ice would not break, but just down the way we created hundreds of little holes, reveling in the "plunk" and tiny spout of water rising each time.  That day we skated too, for hours.  

The girls have even given names to some of our little places, most memorably "Isabella Island," inspired one snowy cold day after listening to hours of Shackelton's spooky adventures in the Antarctic.

I go to the water to feel calm, to let myself breathe. It's a place to reconnect with my family too.  It's also real and alive and sometimes dangerous.  Sometimes I can't shake a haunted feeling of being watched or followed.  We've met scary people more than once (are they there to find calm too?) and once Bear Cub almost lost himself in the current of the Missouri.  Once a poor little turquoise stuffy bunny fell into the irrigation ditch and needed much rescuing.

 
In some deep way, the River is where I mark passage in this life.  It is where my sweetest and most profound memories of my children, eyes wide with curiosity, live in my imagination.  My favorite photograph of myself is one where I crouch on the edge of the water, back to the camera, paints in hand and the wide expanse of water taking up the entire background.  Bella took it, many years ago.

Where do you go to find your soul?  Where do you feel truly alive?

"When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy"

~Rumi ~

In the quiet

It's taken me a year to finally sit down and create a blog.  How easily I am lost in the daily rhythms, how quickly the time slips away.

 But here I am, in a quiet house (well, relatively w/a puppy), my family gone for the weekend.  I am freed from many of the routines of our daily life:  fix breakfast, learn w/ the girls, walk the dogs, lessons, time for bed!  Instead, I ate whatever, whenever.  I lost myself in a project, uninterrupted for hours, I spent a whole evening laughing with a friend.  The freedom was lovely and left me a little lost at the same time.  Where are my anchors?  What's to keep me from flying off, swimming out into the surf?

While my "break" is lovely, and my sense of accomplishment in finishing long neglected tasks (somehow I finally managed to get those canning jars into the crawl space) is gratifying, I am finding how much I cherish those rhythms and tasks and anchors.  Meditation was peaceful this morning, but now the house is a little too quiet.  Where is my Bella, skipping through the house (tracking mud), into the kitchen, "What is there to eat Mama?"  Why does my so proudly clean floor (at 6 am yesterday!!!) seem so wrong?  I have had no questions or curious observations from Katy today.  Looking at her photo leaves me in awe of her imagination.

Alone, quiet, peace.......I need my chaos, keeping my spirit on the earth.

How amazing to have an affirmation:  I have all of the time I need, every day.  My life is just as it should be, the to-do list of my creativity has no expiration date.