That day I saw beneath dark clouds
the passing light over the water
and I heard the voice of the world speak out,
I knew then, as I had before
life is no passing memory of what has been
nor the remaining pages in a great book
waiting to be read.

It is the opening of eyes long closed.
It is the vision of far off things
seen for the silence they hold.
It is the heart after years
of secret conversing
speaking out loud in the clear air.

It is Moses in the desert
fallen to his knees before the lit bush.
It is the man throwing away his shoes
as if to enter heaven
and finding himself astonished,
opened at last,
fallen in love with solid ground.

-- David Whyte
from Songs for Coming Home
©1984 Many Rivers Press

A poem I fell in love with this week
via Andrea

In the meantime, I am putting the finishing touches on my video for the SOAR SCHOLARSHIP for photography. One more leap...

Yesterday was one of those days when I was home alone with my girls and had that horrible but familiar feeling that comes to me once in awhile: that I'm living in a babysitting job gone awry—I keep waiting and waiting for the parents to get home, but they never do.

Years ago, when I did a lot of waitressing, I used to dream I was at work and my section was getting slammed and I was forgetting orders and dropping drinks and the customers were mad at me and people were leaving without paying. In the dream, I was always rushing frantically around, gathering plates, printing bills, taking orders, but could never seem to get on top of it. I would wake from these dreams feeling exhausted.

Some days, life with small kids feels like that dream, like I can never get on top of it, no matter how hard I try.

Yesterday was full of the usual monotony of making snacks and sweeping up crumbs and breaking up spats over whose Barbie is whose—tasks which, on a good day, feel sacred, or at least manageable, but which, on a bad day, feel torturous. Iryn kept complaining about every little thing under the sun and Ella kept banging into things. “I wish we didn’t have this sharp house!” she exclaimed in her tiny, sweet, exasperated voice after one too many toe stubs.

In the afternoon, I wished for a nap, but there were too many interruptions and it never happened. At around three, in an attempt to foster some good cheer, I brought the box of Christmas decorations up from the basement for the girls to look at and instead, spent 45 minutes telling them not to wing the glass balls around before confiscating said glass balls and putting the box away again.

Sometimes the noise gets to me. I’ve done a little reading about “The Highly Sensitive Child” because my 7-year-old is definitely highly sensitive. But what I’ve learned more is that I am highly sensitive too. This plays out when it comes to noise and too many things going on at once, and sometimes, at home with the kids, I feel like all the emotions and noise and voices are like darts ricocheting off the walls and inside my head and I long to get away but often I can’t.

The house felt sharp to me too, but in a different way.

At 6:30, C got home, and I said “Tag, you’re it,” then proceeded to lock myself in the bathroom. Later, I drove downtown to see my friend NORM perform, and joined him for a couple of songs and started to feel like myself again.

This morning, Sunday, we woke to snow covering everything. It was a morning of chocolate chip pancakes and decorating the Christmas tree. C made a fire and steamed some Egg Nog.

The darts are not flying around in my head so much now. Out the window, the snow is softening all the sharp edges.