Last week was a struggle to keep my thoughts positive. Maybe it was the moon. I don't know. The world seemed doomed, and all I could think of was about moving into the forest, away from the car fumes downtown, away from the addicts (or druggers as my 5-year-old likes to call them) who shoot up in the vacant lot across the street. Life felt precarious and frightening. I felt too human and vulnerable.

On Friday night, as I was giving the girls baths, Craig called me out into the hall and said we had to get the girls outside immediately, because there was a gas leak. I kicked into mother-hen mode, gathering the girls from the tub, wrapping them in their robes and pulling them outside. It was especially bothersome that we had a fire in our fireplace going, but what can you do? We called the fire department and waited out on the road for our house to explode.

The trucks came and the gas company tested our house with little tiny machines. We had definite traces of carbon monoxide in the house, and they advised us to find somewhere else to spend the night while they condemned our furnace and the house aired out.

We went to stay at our good friends' place. They had extra blankets and beds and all of that. They made tea. I got the girls to bed and then I went to bed myself.

As I crawled into bed, Ella woke up. She was scared of falling and began clinging to me like a little lobster. She would not let go. I laid down and managed to get her to sleep with her on top of me. But every time I tried to move her off, she'd wake up crying, clinging. I was trapped. And really uncomfortable. And cold. I desperately wanted to sleep. Because I was tired. But also because I couldn't shut off my brain. My mind was a battlefield full of dead bodies and bombs. The world felt like a scary, scary place. Had we been breathing in carbon monoxide for days and days? (I had had a headache.) Could your house just randomly explode with no warning? Yikes.

I kept trying to move Ella, but she clung and cried. I was pinned to the bed. It was driving me crazy. By now it was 2am. I actually considered knocking her head with something, not TOO hard, just enough to knock her out so I could sleep. One thinks such things at 2am with children.

It suddenly and clearly came to me, all at once: Ella is me. I am Ella. I am a screaming, afraid child. I imagined God becoming equally impatient with me, blowing out air, saying in her kindest voice: You're being rediculous. You're fine. You are JUST FINE".

Finally I got Ella off me. I fell asleep, trying to trust again, for the millionth time. It feels like my life is all about this. Maybe all our lives are, really, come to think of it.

Morning came. Things looked a little better. Ella looked out the window and saw dandelion puffs on the grass and called them bubbles. We went upstairs and made tea, ate the last of the strawberries and cheese I'd bought on our way over the night before.

We drove home. The house was cold. Freezing cold. We lit a fire. I made a little bed in front of the hearth and slept again. The girls watched a Winnie The Pooh movie.

There is this one part in the movie where everyone thinks Christopher Robin is in trouble. They go on a perilous journey to find him. But what you learn in the course of the story is that everything they're afraid of is really just shadows and illusions. Nothing real.

I tried to remember this. My mind started to calm down. I started to get quiet for the first time in awhile.

Then I went to the library and got a book. A book I'd been waiting 2 weeks for. It was everything I'd hoped for. I started it in the evening and finished it the following afternoon. God only knows how, between napping and making meals (okay, we had cereal for dinner) and taking care of the girls (okay, so maybe they watched a little more tv than usual). I laughed and cried and sighed out loud while the fire crackled. That's what I love about reading. Good books have the ability to lift you out of you own mind, and into another place. But stangely, after you're done, you see your life a little more clearly than you did before.

What to say?
It's cold now. I forget. I take the girls out in light jackets, no hats. They shiver in the crisp air. It's hard to let fall go. We wake to frost white across the grass. The geese are loud sometimes as they cross over the house, leaving.

Today was a headachy day. A write-off day. I meant to get so much done with some time off, and ended up sleeping, brooding. I wish for a good book, for wood for the fire, for a long afternoon alone, in and out of sleep. I wish for a long walk in a warm hat, for tea in one mittened hand.

Today I am making peace with my own limitations. I always trick myself into thinking I can accomplish so much, get so much further down the road. The girls went away for 3 whole days last weekend. THREE WHOLE DAYS. Somehow I believed I'd get so much finished, I had a list a mile long of all the things I'd do without interruptions. But I forgot how strange I feel without them here....I miss them like a ghost limb. I wander around lost, overwhelmed, unable to focus with more than my usual 2 hour increments to work with. I always picture myself writing long into the night, or becoming lost in time for a whole morning and afternoon with my paints and poetry. The truth is, I'm incredibly scattered and never was very good at focusing for long periods of time. (In school days, this meant I was terrible at doing my homework. After 6 hours in a desk, how could I?) The truth is, my life works best with my kids at home, for now, anyway. Maybe one day, I'll learn to use hours and hours, but for now, I am okay with my pieces.

In the summer of 2000, in a 2nd hand bookstore in Mendocino, California, I found a book where I woman wrote:

"For me, the balance between doing and just being is the most important and dangerous question. If I am guilted or lured into achieving too much and lose the stillness at my centre, then it takes me a long time to regain it, and I do violence to myself and those I love because of fatigue and pressure. I have had to give up 'winning big' because I love my life when I am connected to it and I hate it when I get caught up in competition and deadlines."
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In the evenings, we pile every cushion and pillow in the house on the floor below the couch. We lay the big, white, Queen-sized duvet across it all, and the girls jump onto it, first from the desk behind the couch, then onto the couch, then finally into the pile of pillows. They laugh, like they are landing on clouds. They get some pretty good airtime. Tonight they took off all their clothes and put their tutus on. They always put them on backwards, so their little butt cheeks hang out. I forgot to close the blinds. I can only imagine how it looked to the people across the street who must have seen it through the big picture window. 2 bright ballerinas flailing, then disappearing, then appearing again, aglow in the dim lamplight.