hello, all:

whfere to begin. . . .

I’m listening to the LOVE soundtrack from Cirque de Soleil show featuring the remixed work of the Beatles. I’m in my classroom still, as I have not yet had the chance to set up my little e-world in my office in our new home.

It would be ridiculous to list all of the challenges my family and I have faced in these past 5 weeks. Just ridiculous. I might be a deep person, but I’m not the type who likes to go on and on about the things that aren’t going my way. We all have our stresses, our trials, our tribulations, and I know it’s what we do with them that defines who we are.

I’ve been gone for this block of time simply b/c I didn’t want to write about these things. I don’t want to go on and on about the stress, the sadness, the grief. Too much good goes on all around us regardless of the hard times that fall upon us; I choose to see those good things as often as I might be allowed.

So: We’re moved into our new house. Our scaredy cat is over with us now, too, after having to trap him like some wild beast. Our boxes are still filling the back porch and family room, but that’s ok. I’ll unpack more tonight.

Mom’s in her second week of hospice, and she is straddling that veil separating this world from that other heavenly place. I wonder if she will make it to her birthday on Saturday and Mother’s day on Sunday. Sunday marks the two-year anniversary of when she became a DNR patient. We were sure we were going to lose her that morning. She proved us wrong for two good years, God bless her. But the cancer has spread too deeply within her, and she is letting go.

My brothers and my sister–we’re all going through this a little differently. Someday, this will make a good post.

Through all of this, the lives of our children continue to move in wondrous directions. I couldn’t help but smile last week when, on the ride home from gymnastics, my oldest daughter (she’s almost 11) asked me if girls ever teased me when I was her age.

“Oh, yes. Very much so. They would chase us around the playground, and when they caught us, they would either kiss us on the cheek or claw us. There never really seemed to be any reason to whether we got a kiss or the claw.”

She giggled at this and proceeded to tell me how she and another girl hide various things of some of the boys in her class. She tells this story like it’s a wonderful secret, and she giggles with an excitement, an electricity that only the coming of adolescence and puberty can bring.

And in that moment, I was reminded that the tough times are always present. Sometimes they are a little closer to us than we might prefer, but the same is true with the good times as well. Sometimes, they might be a little distant, but with an open heart they run to us, wrap around us like that warm blanket just out of the dryer.

Comfort in the smallest of places.

keep finding the good, friends. There’s a lot of it out there that’s just waiting to wrap itself around you.