I am sitting at my computer, window shopping at Etsy for the various things on the Christmas list Sam and I made the night before. I am unsure just exactly how to fulfill this tall order, as he has decided that everyone he loves shall have a hat for Christmas. Some hats are easy--a frog hat for his beloved Diane's brand new baby, well, there are pages and pages of baby frog hats on Etsy. I pick a cute one and put it in the cart. A dragon hat for Jim--again I find a great dragon hat, but I'm not sure Jim would ever wear it (not to mention the fact that he HATES getting presents), so I put it on the favorites to think it over (and someone else snaps it up before I can make up my mind). But for Shelley, Sam wants a cup hat. And I wonder, what the hell is a cup hat?

And I notice that it happens more and more often these days that I ask myself that question--what the hell does that mean? Because somewhere in the past two weeks, must have been when I was making lunch or something, Sam grew up. Or, that is, anyway he grew out of toddlerhood and into little kidhood. One morning he got himself up without waking me, packed up his potato heads in a little bin and lugged them into Husband's room and woke him up to play instead instead of me! And when I woke up two hours later I felt like a brand new human being. It was the kind of luxurious, luscious sleep I haven't had in over three years, it was marvelous.

And he has done that every morning for two weeks and I can feel the difference in every cell of my body. Before I go to sleep at night, which now is when I'm ready rather than when the nagging voices tell me I should, I have learned to make Sam a yoghurt smoothie and a little peanut butter sandwhich and leave it in his special spot in the fridge to keep him fortified until I get up.

And he plays by himself so much more often and makes up many stories and words and worlds that all are all new to me, mysteries, things I don't entirely understand, things that live inside Sam, belong to Sam, that are all his own.

And on Jim days he runs out to meet Jim, comes back in and grabs his own clothes from the dresser (because he is otherwise always naked), heads out the door and I don't see him again for a couple of hours. A COUPLE of HOURS.

And I am sitting in my office shopping, lollygagging, dawdling, looking at all the pretty trinkets, wandering around shops that have nothing to do with Christmas hats, looking at things I love, doing and thinking things that are all my own. I am loving this stillness, the calm I feel because finally I have that sense of ease, that true knowing that Sam is fine. That frissure of anxiety that kept my shoulders hunched whenever I used to try to do anything else but be totally focused on him is gone. Somewhere in the night, or perhaps in the late hours of that first marvelous morning, it just left me. I am always attuned to my boy, but now in a way of circulating connection, not anxious worry.

Some mornings he still needs me to get up with him. Some days he still wants to play with me all day long. But things are different now, he is just so much more himself, separate from me. There is, of course, a way in which I grieve this, but it comes with the release of such a weight I didn't even know I was carrying that I can embrace this new phase of our lives with open arms. Now I know what it's like to just be, just be with my son, with my family, with myself.

I am loving this. But I still don't know what the hell a cup hat is...

I've wanted to have something to say for so long now, and yet have shied away from my blog, from the public airing of my thoughts, because they sometimes seem so twisted and repetitious. Worry, worry, worry and then a respite from the worry in which I am flooded with joy and gratitude, and then another bout of worry, worry, worry.

And yet, lately, I have finally come to understand that Sam is an ever changing, ever evolving work of natural beauty and art. So that one day, when it seems I am incapable of meeting the challenge of mothering this child, I go to sleep in despair. But in the morning awake to find that Sam has magically outgrown whatever it was that seemed so dire at the time.

We play, we talk, we tell stories, we fuss and sometimes we even fight. Because that's what people do. I am astounded by his strong sense of self, his inner balance and stable core. That is not to say he doesn't melt down from time to time, but it never happens without reason, and almost always could have been avoided by a little proactivity from me.

Most days, we have learned to walk, walk, walk until the anxiety, the tension, the agitation leaves us. We can walk far enough into the desert to leave most anything behind and, out there, in the clean and barren landscape, we become lost in our adventures, our imaginings, and we reconnect. So that when we return the bond between us is srong enough to weather my fatigue, his agitation, our collective angst and hereditary dysfunction.

In recent days we have walked and adventured, we have written a book, we have built block cities and introduced the dinosaurs to the doll dolls to see if they could cohabitate in the roundabout doll house (but they could not). We have cooked, and even cleaned a bit, and spent hours sitting in the bathroom reading while Sam waits to see if he can let himself poop on the potty. We have read books and told stories, we have shopped and gone visiting. We have watched movies and discussed movies and pretended to be Shaggy and Scooby Doo. Sam has become a 'big brother' to his beloved Diane's brand new baby boy, and he has helped me do the footwork, the organizing, the ground's preparation and the enduring of the Second Annual Firehouse Fling (which netted over four thousand dollars this year).

And we have bickered and irritated one another. It is strange, this feeling of irritation with my boy--new and uncomfortable, and yet, a part of this life as a family. It is hard some days to move on from the halcyon days of Sam's babyhood in which I still thought it possible to spend an entire lifetime with my son and never raise my voice or be annyoyed by him.

And sometimes, I find pure joy in the very fact that we have the downs as well as the ups, that we live a fully rounded life, that we are human, that we are fallible, and that it doesn't matter. Because this is just what people do.

I am sitting in the front seat of my car on the side of the highway, the car is running, the air conditioner is going full blast, Sam is asleep in the back. I know, of course, that this is one of those things you are not 'supposed' to do. But it is a little moment of quiet solitude, a chance to look through the patterns I found today, sit still, think my own thoughts, just be.

Except, of course, that Just Being in a small town is sometimes a little tricky. Because I am not just an anonymous car pulled over on the side of the freeway with strangers passing by. This road leads to a very particular place in the middle of nowhere, and most everyone who drives this way, especially at this time of year, knows me and Sam. Never do I attempt this but someone stops to check and see if we are OK (Auntie Whoozie now just slows, waits for a thumbs up, nods, and drives on).

Today, I look up to see the brake lights on my old beloved Subaru. Big Chris and his boy are making the U-turn to come back and check on me so I roll down the window and let them know I'm OK. The boy, with his bright red mohawk, looks quite concerned, and then relieved. He's such a great kid, so big, so intense, with a mind that works so fast and furious I can hardly keep up. He is maybe 12, sometimes a little awkward and hesitant, mostly barreling forward at a furious pace.

Last week he accompanied Theresa on her weekly visits to help us dig out from under the clutter of our lives and he played with Sam, pushing him around in the little red car. And it hit me that, like this nearly man sized boy, Sam is going to be a big man some day.

This realization astounds me when it happens (it has happened before). He will be big, bigger than me. He'll be big and loud and boisterous and maybe he will have a carefully glued mohawk standing on the top of his head.

You see, the thing is, that boy is so real but Sam still somehow sometimes seems like something I read in a fairytale. I guess it is that Sam and I and Husband live in a bit of a bubble out here on the edge of the world. Our lives are so quiet and easy, so peaceful and free (except for all the madness roiling around on the inside). It is a kind of fairytale we are living. It is a blessed and lovely life.

And yet sometimes I feel a frissure of fear when I think about Sam growing into a man. What if this life doesn't seem so enchanted to him? What if he wishes he lived more like other people? What if he turns out to be a freak completely incapable of socializing with other people? What if, what if, what if...

What if I am a failure? What if I can not do this? What if I am as lame at this as I have been at everything else I have ever tried?

But shhh, quiet little monkeys, I say. What if this is not about me? What if this is not about failure or success? What if we just live our lives and believe that love truly does heal all things when the heart remains open to it? What if we believe in miracles, what if we give our hearts to love, what if we stop thinking about the future and start living in this moment?

What if we Just Be, right here on this highway, no matter how many other cars drive by?

Today was an odd sort of day in which I continually flipped through the different versions of the story of my life, rather like changing channels with a remote. I saw my stories ebbing and flowing like the colors in a kaleidescope. I noticed that sometimes I felt quite peaceful and pleased with my life, and others I felt like an enormous failure. These dramatic shifts and swings in my view of my world I attribute to reconnecting with my beloved niece, whom I spoke to today for the first time in three years. It was a joyous thing to hear her voice, to learn about her life and all that she has created for herself. But in opening the door to her, a few little wispy black imps snuck in, scampering past her feet.

They are the little imps that used to always inhabit my thoughts, the ones that whisper that I am ugly, stupid and no good. They are the ones that inhabit any interaction with my mother and sisters, poking their bony fingers in all the old painful wounds.

I had no idea, until I stopped interacting with my family of origin, just how much pain I was carrying around, tightly packed away in the various corners of my mind. In the small hours while Sam sleeps, I have wandered back to the past, following the trails of the pain I feel now, back to its various points of origin. This is sometimes a horrifying process, for it means sitting still with things I have avoided for sometimes 40 years. I sometimes feel punched and pummeled by what comes up, literally feel the pain in my chest as the full impact hits me.

My mother left me. Because I was stupid and ugly and no good. And she left my sister, too, who must also have been stupid, ugly and no good. Because our mother took the other sister, who was pretty and clever and wonderful, with her when she went and left no forwarding address, just a bundle of food stamps and rent paid up until the end of the month.

And as a stupid, ugly and useless girl I presented myself to the world--a cracked and broken vessel into which no amount of love could be poured and ever reach the top. And I attracted very little love into my life, very little at all. Mostly, what I met with out there was desperation. I understand now that what I met was a match for what I carried inside--desperation.

Walking in the desert this evening with Sam I feel the perfect heat, the moment when the outside temperature matches my body temperature and the sun is low enough not to scorch, high enough to give the most lovely light. More and more lately this moment in a summer evening has tugged at me, gnawed at me. There is something I want from it, but I don't know what, and I remember that feeling of desperation.

Sam is roaring and chasing me and I can barely remember where I am going, that I am running, or why. I am having trouble remaining in the present, I am only here in this desert by the slightest thread of connection.

I want something, but I don't know what it is. I see hot asphalt and a Slurpee at 7-11, summer evenings, warm air, something lacking, something painful, something I want. It's back in Concord, where I must have been maybe 11. We lived there for a few months, I fell off a skateboard and broke my ankle. Construction workers brought me home, my father wasn't around so my sister called an ambulance.

I want something from that hot day, that memory, I want something that I can't have and I don't know what it is. But I notice for the first time that sense of wanting, it is something I carried with me for most of my life, so familiar that I never noticed it until I experienced the absence, and then return of it. That reconnecting with my niece, despite her own sparkle and loveliness, awakened old memories of my family, and of that feeling of emptiness and want so entwined with a dark sense of self loathing.

We are heading home me and Sam, the darkness is gathering, our foot tracks becoming indistinct. We reach the road--hot asphalt--and Sam trips over the toes of his new shoes and goes down on one knee hard. I am there in an instant, moving with that superhero lightning speed that eludes me in any other moment in time. I scoop him up in my arms and blow on his knee and give him kisses and snuggle him while I carry him home. Home is a long way away now, now that this heavy child is in my arms, but I carry him and he cries until he's done and hugs into me and as my breath comes heavier he pats my arm to comfort me.

And suddenly it hits me, I know what it is I want from that memory. I want this. I want someone besides a man in a hardhat splattered with tar, a man I don't know, to pick me up when I fall and break my ankle. I want someone to notice that it hurt. I wanted someone to hold me and love me up. I wanted someone to carry me safely home.

And no one did. Not then, or in all the years following when the injuries were so much more sinister than this.

And so later, I sit with that. And I'm sitting with it still, and writing it out here and tying off the end of this little helium balloon and sending it out into the sky. Get along little memory, go find a happy place to play. I release you now.

There was no one there that day, that year, that lifetime of mine, so long ago. But now, here I am. I am here. And suddenly, that is enough.

I scoop up my boy, I examine my heart, I look back at that child that I was. In the cool comfort of our home, we patch Sam's knee with an enormous bandaid and draw on it with magic markers. And then we play dinosaurs, start to yawn, go to bed, fall asleep.

We are safe, we are loved, we are home, we are whole. And, at least for now, the desperation has subsided.

Bless you Mom, bless you my sisters. I'll see you out there on that field, the one I read about somewhere the other day, the green meadow out there beyond the place of right-doing and wrong-doing, beyond the place of judgement, pain and hurt. I don't know when, but I will see you there one day.

Happy Birthday

What a lovely, lovely day! I love this day, I love remembering Sam's birth as a seperate person and my birth as a mother. I love eating chocolate cake made by Auntie Whoozie and Uncle Carl's mesquite grilled chicken made just for Sam. I love the friends who are our family. I love Theresa's grandchildren who brought Sam a home made card with quarters taped to it and John and Ryan and Shelley who came all the way here just to be with us and Karen who drove all this way and Diane and her big pregnant belly and Max and his happy smile, and Jim who came early and stayed late and sat outside under a tree when there got to be too many people in the house. There is so much I want to write about all that the celebration of this birthday means to me, but I was too busy living it and now I want to go to bed--so here is a happy photo instead.

Social Justice For Children

How exceptionally fabulous is this website???!!!!

http://www.parentingforsocialchange.com/index.html

This is just exactly what I've been wanting to say, or wanted to say some time ago, to an old friend who has always been on the front lines of the fight for social justice but felt it was good for her daughter to learn to suck it up when she didn't like her mother's choices. I know my friend loves her daughter and believes in her choices as much as I belive in mine, and I don't fault her for making them, but the irony of it drove me mad. I couldn't quite think how to put it into words, except to say that I now believe I understand why the revolution always seems to fail. Or that is, to succeed, because it's just a revolving power play, over and over and over (and therefore a revolution, rather than an evolution), the oppressed rise up, defeat the oppressor, become the oppressor. Because no matter how many NVC classes we take or how many collectives we participate in or consensus decisions we make with adults, we are raising our children to expect, to pariticipate in, to see as normal the oppresser/oppressed relationship because that is what they experienced with their own parents, no matter how well meaning or loving we may be.

Every time we say 'because I said so', every time we discount our children's voices, every time we insist that we know better, every time we leave them crying, or worse tell them to stop crying, every time we punish them in whatever way, 'gentle' or not so gentle, we demostrate to them that this is how the world works--oppressor and oppressed--I know what's right and you don't, I know what's good for you, I have the power so we will do it my way. How COULD we ever hope to break that cycle on a global, social level if we can not do it in our own homes?

Anyway, I love this website. She says it all so much better than I could!

Beloved Boy, beloved home, beloved husband. We sleep, we eat, we wilt in the heat. Tomorrow we set out on an adventure in search of lions and tigers and dolphins, oh my! Inside the air conditioned casinoes in Las Vegas, we'll track wild game and press our noses against the glass to see these amazing creatures up close. It is, perhaps, an imperfect way to form relationships with the other inhabitants of this planet, but for now it is the only way we have.

Penned inside our house, curtains drawn against the intense heat, we're all becoming cagey, would be pacing the floors if we had the energy. Sam tries to bounce himself around, but becomes floppy instead. He is living on green drink and mango juice with the occasional tofu dog or bite of chicken. It's just too hot to eat. But tonight we packed with joyful anticipation of our journey, how it will be, what we might see.

I never used to notice the heat because intense heat, you see, brings about an inevitable stillness. You can struggle against it all you like, but it will win you in the end. Attempt all the doing that can be done, and still you'll find it just doesn't seem important any more. I used to love how the heat drowned out the incessant doing that happened outside of this desert. But now that I live with a small person whose doing is the natural expression of the abundance of youthful energy, and for whom not doing leads to an uncomfortable sense of edginess, I see that doing has its value. And that my preference for stillness won't be enforced, heat or no.

And so we go and do what we can. Sam will be three years old in less than a week. Three years it's been since the last time I lay low under the heat and reveled in the stillness. Sometimes I miss that, but the missing passes quickly and the doing is made bearable, and even preferable by the company it keeps.

Shifting

It's coming on sunset and Sam and I are walking across a grassy field at the park in town. It's movie night, a big balloon screen looms at the corner of the park and the grass is strewn with blankets and chairs and coolers and families all coming alive in the evening breeze.

We've been walking for a while now, over to the playground, past the skate park where we stopped and Sam watched mesmerized as those young boy men flew around on their little wheeled wonders. We're on our way to the snack bar and Sam asks, Do they have bars there? And I say No, snacks. Oh, he says, what kind of snacks. I don't know, I answer, won't know till we get there. Well, let's go! he says, quickening his steps.

And it's one of those moments, those moments in which I feel my heart expand, in which I feel the whole life force of the universe inside my chest. The slanting sun is just skimming his bright yellow hair and light touches his head and makes him glow and I know, know, know how perfect is this moment in time, this very second, this step on the grass, this unremarkable conversation. It is all so perfect, so sweet and fine.

There was a time when a moment like this would have made my heart just as quickly constrict in fear, fear of loss, fear of joy, fear of the unknown. But tonight it stays wide open, just as wide as it can get.

We've transitioned into something new, Sam and me. He left his babyhood behind some time ago, but I think I was unwilling to let it go. I mourned it but wouldn't let myself cry those tears. Because I realized recently, with the help of my lovely friend Shari, that I was also mourning something else. And in unraveling those threads it seems I've set both Sam and me free from a little trap we had fallen into.

Sam is a kid now, a little boy, a separate, whole, comletely fabulous person. And I think we are both inhabiting that space now with ease and joy. I have enjoyed his company so much lately, have enjoyed being a part of this family--not just lived up to it, but enjoyed it fully. It is a new experience for me, one I am loving.

Off in the distance Husband sits waiting, his brand new computer controlled leg propped up on one knee, a position he hasn't been able to manage in nearly 30 years. Funny how so much can be so new when we used to think of ourselves as so old. Sam coming in new, with all his energy, vitality and considerable force of will, has yanked us back from the edge of that slow slide into nothingness that used to be our lives.

Finally, the movie starts and we settle into our fancy folding lawn chairs. Sam downs a strawberry milk, jumps up and declares himself ready to go. Husband and I just laugh and start gathering up our stuff. I don't care about the movie, wasn't paying attention anyway.

That moment, that moment in the light, that's all I came here for.

Becoming True

I want so much to write about what I've learned the past few weeks while riding the roller coaster of motherhood, but I'm not sure that I yet have words for that. I want to write about the perils of inauthenticity, the value of true feeling, the worth of real friends. There is so much woven into the rich tapestry of my recent experience I'm not sure I'm past feeling it into the place of writing it, and yet I don't want it to slip away.

For it's been a time in which I've wondered if I've lost my son's trust forever, whether I will ever grow beyond the reactivity and old patterns in which I have always lived, and in which I've also never been more sure that miracles are mine for the making.

It is Sam's Jim, standing in the kitchen, talking casually over Sam's head while I prepare lunch for him and our family, that closes the circle of this particular journey for me. Jim and Sam are wet and muddy from playing in the back yard, and tired and thirsty and hungry and laughing and I love them both very much. And I say again an inadequate thank you for the heroic efforts he made on Sam's behalf a few days ago, when the crazy dance of inauthenticity had me spinning in circles until I lost sight of the ground and spun myself over the edge of a cliff.

And I left home without telling Sam where I was going.

I am crying now as I write this. It is a hard thing to see in black and white. It brings back so many memories, it is so hard to separate this, the reality of this experience from the memories of my past. I swore my own child would never know that feeling, that feeling of abandonment and terror.

And yet, he went to look for me and I wasn't there. I told him I was going to take a rest, and I got in the car and drove away. And he watched me go, said Jim, but didn't seem to realize I had really left until he went to lie down with me and have a drink of milkies. And when he couldn't find me, he became hysterical.

As I was driving away, I knew how hard it would be and yet I couldn't turn back. Because I had waited too long. Because instead of admitting that I needed time away now and then and finding a good way to make it happen, I told myself I could be OK with Sam's desire to have me always with him, 24 hours a day. It had been three months or more since I left the house alone. It felt strange to be in the car alone. I felt an odd mix of something that wanted to turn into guilt, but didn't ever quite get there, and the rush of sudden freedom.

Because underneath all the old stories, I also knew that Sam was in good care, that he was safe and loved with Jim and his Dad to take care of him (that is Sam and Dad in the photo).

And they did. They stepped up like the heroes they have been waiting three years to become to this little boy whose mama blocked his clear vision of anyone else in his world. His Daddy held him while he cried and between them Jim and Husband deciphered Sam's words, which are hard to understand when he cries and his barely existant 'S' disappears. They put him in Jim's car, which has no front passenger seat and no seat belts (a sedan modified for sleeping in on the road), forget about car seats, and they drove to Shoshone to see if they could find me. And they bought him a juice and a cookie and they walked around until he finally became interested in other things. And when they passed a cop on the road they told him to duck down and he did and lay still as a statue--three renegades on the run!

But this story fills me with remorse because all I hear while Jim is repeating it is the story of my father piling my sister and me into the back of our old VW and cruising around the motels and bars looking for my mother.

But that's another story. It's not this story. It's not this reality, this time, this place. It is me reliving the experience I create over and over to mimic that past until I'm done with it, and I have this light and airy feeling that perhaps I am done with that small portion of it. Because I let myself feel what it felt like. I let myself feel guilty and sad about the present moment until I was done, I let myself feel scared and sad about the past until I was done. Then I let myself feel immense gratitude for the chance to feel these things, to work through these things, to have this moment, this freak out, and do it within the safety net we've created for our lives.

And all this was what I learned and felt, and that day things changed between Sam and I for the better in an amazing kind of way. I apologized for not telling him where I was going, for the hurt and sadness he felt. I thanked him for making it possible for me to have time away and told him how much it had helped me. Because, while standing in a sandwhich shop that afternoon, talking with a rough country woman about parenting, I also had another revelation about respect and about how Sam had lost respect and trust in me because I was not living in my authentic truth. And I felt the awful black hole of remorse begin to open up and try to swallow me whole, but instead I stepped away and sat still with all the feelings that were inside me, met them, shook their hands, invited them in for a chat and let them go when we were done.

And now, while I'm making lunch, I learn that my runaway day was not all about me. Because Jim says, so quietly I almost miss it, that he had no idea how much he could love another person until he came face to face with Sam's suffering. He said much the same thing most new mothers say about how they never knew how much they could love until they held their children in their arms. And Jim had five children once upon a time, children he abandoned many years ago in the murky past. But it wasn't until this, his 75th year on earth, that he came to truly feel the power of having his heart connected to another human being.

And Sam learned that he can depend upon his father and his friend. And I learned that I can depend upon them, too. And it came clear to me in a blast of understanding that there are so many things it is OK for me to not be able to do. It's OK if I don't want Sam to kick me in the shins, and oddly enough, it's OK for me to kick him back (ever so lightly) because it makes him laugh and then we are done with that. It's OK for me to need to have a morning out now and then, and it's OK for Sam not to want me to go. I still don't know how it will come about, how we'll make it OK for me to leave and him to stay and both of us to feel good about it, but I remembered to remember to leave the door open and just let the solution come in when it's ready. Hold the space for the possibility, that's all I have to do.

That's all I ever have to do. That, and love my boy and his father and his best friend, and even more importantly, myself. Because I am their rock. There was a time, not so long ago, when I would have thought 'Uh oh, anybody who has me for their rock is in serious trouble'. But I am growing up now, I get that I can be a rock. I have it in me and I'm finding it piece by piece. Sometimes I am a rock with jagged edges, odd shaped and asymmetrical, but I am solid nonetheless.

This I know.

Thank you god.

I'm sitting on a dusty couch in an old trailer perched on a hill near our house. It is a lovely old trailer, our sometimes guest house, and the kitchen is very small, so small that two chairs placed face to face make a perfect platform for a small person to stand on while he moves around and 'cooks' to his heart's content, banging pots and pans with gusto.

My son, hereinafter (or until he changes his mind) known as Poopy, says he is making me, hereinafter known as PeePee, a pizza. And while he works, we talk about the black widow spiders that live around our property, about the web that wraps around the tow ball on the outside of this trailer and reaches all the way to the ground.

Last night, in the darkness, Poopy (AKA Sam) and I went out walking with a flashlight and came upon a large black widow tending to that web. We talked about these sleek, dark spiders, and looked at the red hour glass on her underbelly, and Sam studied her carefully without going too close because, as he says 'we have to respect her distance'. Black Widows, you see, are solitary creatures who like to be left alone. If they must share the planet with humans, these spiders appear to ask only that we don't stick our big fat fingers and toes within their reach. In the daytime, while we clatter around in the world living our human lives, they stay politely out of sight in their little dens, waiting for nightfall, for the time when they can spin and weave and eat and drink in peace.

What we know about these spiders is this--that they will bite if we come too close, and that their bite contains a venom that can cause us incredible pain and agony if it doesn't kill us. Knowing this sometimes makes us fearful, makes us want to stamp out this threat, this possibility of death, illness, misery.

But, of course, you can't stamp out a possibility. You can, if you wish, run around knocking down the fierce webs these spiders weave (so strong that a small person can get seriously tangled in them, as Sam can atest), and spraying poison all around the place and smushing unsuspecting spiders with a long handled broom. But still, in the morning, you will find more webs wavering in the wind, catching the desert debris.

The thing is that the possbilitity of misery is something that only exists in the mind, in the thoughts, in the dialogue of the chattering monkeys. Killing any amount of spiders can never make that possibility go away because there are always more spiders.

Last night Sam became so enamored of these black widows that we walked around all the buildings on our property and found four more out and working on their webs. We could have killed all these spiders, and torn down the other webs we found, and sprayed and did all the other exterminatorish things we could think of, but eventually there comes the moment when we step beyond the boundary of our property. In that moment when we leave the piece of land inhabited by humans and journey into the desert that lives its own life, it will serve us better to know how to walk among the spiders than how to eradicate them.

I get that sometimes, despite our best efforts at living at peace within the material world, we are going to clash and bang up against other creatures, human, spider, whatever. I get that sometimes this hurts, sometimes it hurts really badly. But now, the other thing I get, is that I don't want to live my life worrying over the possibility of these moments.

I just want to live my life right here, right now, spiders and all.

Dirt Chin the Urchin

Sometimes I worry. I worry that Sam seems pale, I worry about those dark shadows that show up under his sparkly eyes sometimes. I worry about his restlessness and my sometimes inability to help him direct his energy. I worry that he is bored, unhappy, not getting what he needs.

We had company over the weekend, good friends we haven't seen in a long time. Sam was so pleased with their visit, he seemed at ease in a way he hasn't been for a while now and I finally realized that we're transitioning into a new phase. It seems that we might be moving out of Velcro land and into Social world. So today, when he started pulling things off the shelves and throwing things around, we got in the car and went for an adventure. We ended up under the cottonwood trees in the crawdad creek at China Ranch and it was lovely and perfect. And we looked at EVERYTHING in the gift shop while he ate his ice cream and chatted with Darryn. Since he used to cry every time she so much as looked at him, this was confirmation that Something New is happening in our lives.

Of course, this means a whole new set of worries. How will I keep up? Where will we find friends? Will people ever stop commenting on his hair? But, as always, I am free to let those worries go and just see what the future holds with no dire visions of the outcome. In the afternoon, Sam and I crossed the road the passes in front of our house and went adventuring into the other side of the desert. And we found the most amazing wash that meandered through a brushy patch of land and we decided it looked like The Land Before Time and we pretended to be dinosaurs and we had a lovely time in this strange and foreign place, from which, if we climbed up on a little knoll, we could still see our house in the distance. And on our way home we stopped in the hideout and sat in the big chair together and rocked and swung until Sam wriggled out and landed on his chin in the dirt. Which is how he became officially known as Dirt Chin the Urchin ( and I am Dirt Mom).

So the thing is, the universe says to me, you just don't know what's out there, what mysteries and miracles might lie across the road, and you can't find out unless you venture to the other side. So you might as well get your shoes on and get going. And if you still feel hesitant, well, don't worry, Sam will get your shoes for you.

I See A Pattern Here

Today I made a box of patterns appear out of thin air.

Well, actually, out of the trash heap at the back of the animal shelter thrift store, but it kind of felt like thin air. I woke up with that itchy feeling that there was something out there for me, and it felt like another box of patterns and I kept thinking about the shelter store, where we haven't been since one of the workers was snippy with Sam. So I bagged up a bunch of giveaway stuff and we set out for town.

I visited my tried and true shops first. At Trevor's I just missed a pile of vintage craft books, very nice ones, too. When we arrived, my arch nemesis was sitting on a little stool golluming over them. And in the space of about three minutes I managed to go from a place of irritation to a place of joy, from a place of thinking 'why didn't I get to those first', to a place of 'wow, he made such a score'. I called up that feeling of how fun and triumphant it is to find something like that and I reveled in it, just the feeling of it, feeling it for him, pinched up little man that he is, and for me, pinched up not quite as little woman that I am. And now I feel unexpectedly friendly toward him, though I don't suppose we will ever actually be friends.

And with that feeling lifting me up, Sam and I moved on to visit Dearest and see what her shop had in store for us--the most beautiful big piece of green wool felt, just exactly the color I've been wanting!!

And after lunch at the duck pond, where we fed the ducks for the first time with a bucket full of dried bread we've been saving up, and Sam had a blast doing it, we went on to the animal shelter. I checked the pattern drawer, one craft pattern, nothing exciting, and I was confused because I just KNEW there were more patterns around somewhere and that was our last stop. So I asked the lady who does all the stocking if she ever gets any old patterns.

And she said, 'Oh, I just threw away a big box of them. They were really old and I didn't think anyone would want them.'

I made a horrified screech before I could stop myself. 'Threw them away, really?" I asked, unwilling to believe this ending to the story.

'Well,' she said, 'maybe they're still out there. I don't think anyone's gone to the dump yet, I'll check.'

She was gone what seemed like forever and I started to get discouraged but then I thought to myself--why wouldn't she find those patterns--why not? And she did! It was huge box of mostly vintage Vogue designer patterns and a few fabulous mail order doll patterns and a great 60's bikini and a fabulous uncut McCall's early 60's summer dress. There were probably about 30 patterns I can use, and about thirty or forty more I can sell as a lot or give away.

And when I asked how much she wanted for them she said, 'Nothing, saves us having to haul them to the dump.'

Ha ha, te he, ha ha, te he!!!!! And now I am golluming over my own treasures.

'I'm glad you love your patterns, Prince Eric,' said Ariel the Mermaid as we were sitting in the car and I was looking through the box and he was finishing his BK mac and cheese.

'I'm glad you love your macaroni and cheese, Ariel,' I answered. And home we went, happy as clams.

The only thing I really did today was to try to pay attention. It seems like such a simple thing, but is much harder than it sounds...

Here is my son in a purple beret. Way back in the distant past there is a purple beret memory that used to make me cringe. Now, when I contrast it with this photo, it just makes me giggle.

The Thing About Stuff

We had a tea party in the tub today, bubbles and all. We had a little table upon which Sam poured out from his pink plastic Beauty and the Beast teapot and we pretended to eat plastic cookies.

"This is a lovely tea party, Clarabelle," I said. "Thank you for inviting me."

"You're welcome, Goofy," says Clarabelle, "I'm glad you're here." And Clarabelle the Cow (who appears regularly on the Micky Mouse Clubhouse, where we got this grand idea to have a tea party in a bubble bath) hands me a little pink cup of tepid water and insists that I actually drink it. So I do.

The thing about cheap plastic toys and unlimited TV and reveling in all the other insane riches this consumer culture has to offer is this: This moment is lovely, and it has made our day--so much so that we do it twice. That we could probably have accomplished similar results without the cheap plastic table, chairs and teaset is true, but that little teapot fit perfectly in Sam's hand and he poured easily into the little cups. He so thoroughly enjoyed himself that I can no longer find it in me to believe that we should feel bad about this.

We have stuff, lots of stuff. We bought it all secondhand and paid next to nothing for it, but it's mostly crazy not very functional junk and there is a lot of it, so much that sometimes we trip over it--especially my one legged husband who has to be very careful moving around at night when he can't see what all might be lying in his path (so distressing to take a step in the dark and land upon plastic hippo that says 'Wow, I'm very hippo stream', whatever the hell that means).

And sometimes the stuff makes me crazy and threatens to take over our home and I wonder if I'm making a horrible mistake and leading my son down that road--you know that road, the one that leads to hell and is paved with good intentions...

But when my son turns to me and says, 'I wish I had wings so I could fly', I rummage in the closet and come out with a pair of nylon butterfly wings just his size and we go out into the wind and he flies. And when he says 'I wish I had a hat like the Masked Retriever', I rummage through our hat collection and our dressup box and outfit him in perfect style. And when he wants to build a house for even the tallest of his dinosaurs, we have enough megablocks to do it.

I know that many people believe it's good for a child not to always get what he wants, and Sam doesn't. It does happen now and then that I just don't have or can't make the props for what he wants to do and he is totally OK with that. Because the stuff isn't the central focus of our lives, it's what the stuff helps us achieve.

A good friend of mine, who has always been very minimalist in terms of spending and acquiring, told me not too long ago that she had realized it wasn't such a bad thing to have money, to save money. Money, she essentially said, empowers us to get where we want to go. But stuff, she remains convinced, is very Bad.

Me, I don't see the difference. These things, money, toys, butterfly wings, are all a means to an end. Acquiring, having, using these things doesn't in itself create a need for more things or perpetuate the cycle of self medication through consumption. What creates the need for more things is the feeling of lack, the feeling of emptiness resulting from chronic emotional and/or material deprivation.

The trinkets and treasures we drag home from town are not the end of our story as consumers. We build worlds with them, create stories, learn about how things work, live vicariously, live large, revel in the feeling of endless possiblity. There is nothing we can not do! But it is not the stuff that gives us this feeling. The stuff supports us in the things we want to accomplish, and having it at hand frees us to broaden the scope of what we can do. Having experienced that kind of freedom to create, to be, to live, to learn, to build, to grow, nurtures a sense of confidence rather than a feeling of need.

And when my son told me that he wished he were a fairy like Tinkerbell, it just so happened that I had a sparkly Tinkerbell costume set aside for just such a possibility. And out into the desert he went, with his magic fairy wand that makes a sparkly sound when you push the pink plastic button, and his green winged fairy dress. And for him it was a real experience of fairyhood. He could have done it without the dress, and even without the wand--but why? Why not live in a world full of sparkle and wonder and possibility?

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Other Things We Did Today

Threw stuffed animals at each other (we have at on of these, too, for just this purpose--very helpful for releasing feelings of aggression and restlessness).

Threw rocks in the desert. Climbed hills and slid down them.

Read books.

Made a pizza!!

Watched Micky Mouse Clubhouse.

Played kickball in the kitchen.

Cleaned house with Theresa in the morning, messed it up again in the afternoon.

This Day

"Jim! Jim! How are you this day?" Sam shouts, as he runs barefoot down the steps and into the driveway to greet his best friend. Jim swoops him up in a hug and they laugh together.

"How am I this day?" Jim repeats the question, charmed by it. "I'm good this day, really good," he answers.

This day. I like those words, I like them very much. This day is, after all, all that really exists.

Within this day I am tired, sluggish, bland, and so glad it is a Jim day. Sam takes His Jim by the hand and runs away with him to the back yard, where they spend an hour throwing dinosaurs into the wading pool and then into the swing. After lunch, when they invite me to watch, I am astounded at Sam's accuracy of aim.

On days like this, when I am so very tired, I often feel the weight of my own failure. But not this day. This day I remember the Art of Allowing. This day I remember to simply be--tired or not tired I just am what I am. I remember that I don't have to create a constant flow of interesting activity for Sam. I don't even have to get up out of bed. If I am OK--if I just am wherever I am, Sam is generally OK, too.

In the afternoon we read from a fun dragon finger puppet book we found at the thrift store. I make voices for the two headed dragon, who asks Sam to hop like a kangaroo and clap like a seal. And he does, and he falls in love with this dragon and spends what seems like an eternity talking to it, showing it all the things he can do with animal sounds and movements (so many!), jumping in and out of the book, tickling the dragon, kissing it and saying how happy he is to meet him this day.

This day I rest from lunch until dinner and Sam and I cook together, and even when he breaks down in tears because he can't get all the corn into the pot, and would rather do what I'm doing, which is tending to a pan of boiling hot oil that I don't feel he's ready to approach, we are OK. And beyond that, as the lovely Josha Grant points out, it is not even necessary to be OK. It is only necessary to be.

To be in this day.

And in the evening as we take our sunset walk in the desert, Sam is Mr. Scrooge and I am Jacob Marley. Sam walks into the warm evening wearing a t-shirt, no bottoms or shoes, a black tophat and a glittery batton for a cane and I pretend to drag my chains along with me. We talk about what the chains symbolize but mostly Sam would rather whack things with his stick--we look for bits of old tin and rocks to whack. And we smell the flowers, those few determined golden blossoms sprouting up out of the crusty desert floor. They smell of suntan lotion and remind me of miracles and I love them.

And as this day ends, we walk home together, Sam and me, Scrooge and Marley, hand in hand under the fading evening sun. Both tired now, we kiss the daddy good night, snuggle into our bed and fall asleep together, unwashed, uncombed, undefined, undetermined, unschooled, unchained, uninterested in all the many things we 'should' have done.

Because, after all, this is the day the lord hath made, we shall rejoice and be glad in it.

Of Pompoms And Other Elusive Riches

I am sifting through a bag of brightly colored pom poms, gathering a little assortment for Sam to float in the moat of glue swirling across the paper in front of him. Glue is something he has only recently discovered and he is especially pleased with the squeezing out part.

This bag of pompoms in my hand is large and full, and I paid maybe a quarter for it at a yard sale. But still I pick through it, taking out a stingy handful and putting away the rest. And as I tuck it back in the sparklies drawer, I become suddenly aware of my own ungenerousness. In this simple act of witholding, I am struck by the very ungenerous nature of my relationship to the world in general. Mostly, I go buzzing along on autopilot, keeping so many things out of arms reach from everyone, anyone in my path, that I don't even realize I do it. I withhold thoughts, energetic connection, affection, conversation, little colored pompoms. And I suppose it's because my default setting is that there will never be enough--that if I use up this whatever it is, I will never have more.

In the best of times now I understand that whatever I need will come to hand in the moment that I need it. But so often these responses, this habitual hoarding, is beyond conscious thought.

Today I have been stingy with my Self. It is one of those days in which I feel like I am a swimming pool from which all of the water has drained away. What's left is a hard bottom covered with dirt and old leaves. And if you try to jump in, you will crack your head because I have nothing left in me to cushion your fall. So I keep myself bent inward and I vibrate outward a palpable warning that the pool is closed today.

But Sam doesn't do closed. If mama is at the bottom, he will jump in, jump on, jump over. And if he cracks his head on my hard edge, that crack is mine to fix and so I will, because that's what mothers do. Even in that moment when it feels like there is nothing left, the mother's heart always has something stored away somewhere, something unexpectedly, perfectly enough for whatever task is at hand. And I am slowly coming to have faith in this simple fact. But sometimes everything inside me screams for solitude and it is hard to hear any other thought over the screaming.

For so long before Sam was born I lived in what now seems like a hermetically sealed bag, never really making contact with the outside world. My favorite vacation was to go into the desert for weeks at a time and revel in not speaking to another soul. I have never, ever even attempted to be present with another human being day in and day out, be responsible to and for that person, always be aware of his thoughts, bodily functions, needs, wants, bumps and scrapes. I wasn't even aware of those things for myself in the times before motherhood and there are days when I am completely overwhelmed by this, when the energy and dedication it takes to simply remain present is enormous. I don't know how other women do this so easily, how it comes to them so naturally. But I see that it does, that it can, that it will in its own time.

So I put the bag of pompoms back on the table, open the sparklies drawer all the way and start pulling things out. I find a little tupperware tub of odds and ends, saved from the fairies I made while waiting for Sam to emerge, and begin again to pick out a stingy handful. Then I catch myself and set the tub next to the vast spread of his glue smeared paper.

He reaches for the tub, picks it up, dumps the whole thing in the middle of that glue, smushes it around with his hand and declares it done.

And that is, in fact, how it's done.

The Perfect Nap

I am waking up from a nap all on my own. I am aware of the perfect weight of the blanket that covers me, enough to feel how impossibly soft it is, enough to keep off the chill of the swamp cooler, not enough to smother me. I notice how comfortable is the pillow where my head is resting, and the bed that holds my body. I feel the bliss of a sweet, uninterrupted, perfectly timed 20 minute sleep cycle. In those 20 minutes, alone by myself with no one to wake me before I am ready, so much has been accomplished. I feel restored. Over the hum of the cooler I hear shrieking and laughter now and then from the back yard, where Sam is chasing His Jim around with a hose. My heart feels full with love and gratitude for their presence in my life and, just for this moment, their absence from this room. The more awake I become, the more aware I am of the dull ache of a full bladder wanting my attention and I know this moment is coming to an end, but it is a time of perfect bliss, gratitude and clarity and I want to remember it.

A nap. There is nothing in the world like a well slept, happily woken from nap.

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Things We Did Today:

Spent an hour or so putting on and taking off animal costumes and pretending to be animals (well, Sam put on the costumes, they are much too small for me!)

Did our new amazing wooden animal jigsaw puzzle over and over.

Sam played with His Jim outside and then got Jim to play Play Doh while they waited for their lunch. Later Sam and I spent a good long time at the table, making Play Doh bugs for Malthasar, the villain in Arthur and the Invisibles. Sam noticed that he liked to eat bugs and, in his new life as Princess Selenia, Sam seemed to feel it would be nice to offer Malthasar some bugs. As the colors mixed and smudged into one another, I felt myself finally relaxing about that. Contrary to the belief I've been holding since I was a kid, the world is full of Play Doh and if we mix this up, dry it out, stomp on it, ruin it, grind it into the carpet, there is plenty more where that came from--we can buy it, we can make it, it will be there if we want it. And Sam really doesn't care what color it is, he just loves it. And now, finally, so do I.

Jumped on the Daddy's bed and made him wake up and play for a while, which Sam loves.

Read books.

Watched movies.

Lived our lives together as a family.

Swimming in Low Water

We're sitting under a big shade tree, having a picnic on an old blanket, listening to a flock of geese honking nearby. It's a lovely, lovely moment in time. Sam is sitting across from me eating his Burger King macaroni and cheese with gusto. The wind is blowing soft, the air is just right--not too hot, not too cold. And Sam has fries, and an apple juice box.

There is a pile of wonderful old Sam size books sitting next to us on the blanket, and a box of 50 fabulous old patterns that I just bought, along with the books, for $4. The thought of this wonderful little haul fills me with glee.

When we're done eating we lean our backs against the tree and read together until Sam sits up and says the geese are calling him. We follow them to the duck pond where we search for turtles and his old friend the red fish who rolls and dips under the water. But today the water is filled with corpses floating belly up, dead fish with blank eyes staring.

Sam is fascinated by this. The fish have succumbed to oxygen deprivation, says the landscaper, whom Sam describes as a 'young man' (let's ask that young man, he says, astounding me). While the level of the pond sunk during a recent construction process, the fish swam in water that was more like mud, and could not fill their fish lungs with what they needed to survive. We walk around and around the pond, Sam and me, counting the dead fish and talking about death.

The ducks and geese speak to Sam as we pass by them and he interprets for me, which I appreciate. In fact, I appreciate everything about this child. I appreciate his exhuberance, his spirit, his sense of humor, his very being.

And later at home, when he runs out of the bathtub with a headful of shampoo and refuses to return for a rinse, I forget for a while how much I appreciate his spirit. I forget myself, who I am, and where I truly come from in the times when the water in my own pond sinks low and I become mired in the mud of my own hormones. And only after I've snapped and seen the light dim in my son's eyes do I remember that who I am is not this story, not this body, not these hormones.

Who I am is a child of god, an extension of the source of everything, an embodiment of love. Who I am, stripped of the stories, the weight, the external blathering and dithering, is everything--the dead fish in the pond, the fiery sun in the sky, the great heart in my child, the dull ache in my head, the joy, the misery, the dark, the light.

I noticed, as we were walking around that pond, that I thought perhaps I should feel more sadness of revulsion over the many dead fish. But I couldn't muster it. Following Sam's lead, I felt only curiosity and a sense of rightness in the universe. Though these moments for now are only moments and fade into foolish temper tantrums (mine, not my child's--he never has temper tantrums), they begin to stretch themselves longer and longer, as if they were hands reaching, one to the other. And when those hands finally clasp and hold fast, they will contain me safe in the knowledge of how well and fine is this earth and everything upon it, whatever it looks like, whatever it feels like, however low the water sinks.

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Other Things We Did Today:

Sam fell asleep in the kid car cart at Albertson's!

We spent an hour playing with Diane at the clubhouse.

Sam actually wandered into the toy room by himself at the thrift store. He hasn't done this since he was not quite two and disappeared while we were playing hide and seek in the round clothes racks at the Salvation Army in Reno (I thought I would die of panic, it was the most horrible five minutes of my entire life, they shut down the whole store and the manager found him cadging cookies in the employee break room). This surprised me and made me feel hopeful for a future in which he might once again be OK without me right exactly next to him. I didn't say anything about it, just followed him in there and played for a while.

We watched Arthur and the Invisibles, Sam's first real action movie. He loved it, and now he is Princess Selenia and I am Arthur, and Daddy is the King.

We had shrimp salad sandwhiches for dinner, another thing I've been wanting for a long time but hadn't ever even thought about just making. Found everything I needed at Albertson's, even the croissants, and used the leftover shrimp from the tempura. It was very tasty.

Things We Did Today:

Went to the museum, where Sam took especial interest in the mammoth bones, though he has seen them many times before. We walked around and around and around the display case cataloging the different bones and matching them to parts of his body. And later, while we sat on the floor of the post office waiting for Jennifer to return from her lunch break, he was able to list all those bones from memory for his Auntie Suzi, who just happened to come for her mail at the same time we did.

We counted out the donations in the Fire District jars at the store and the restaurant in Shoshone. Sam tasted Tobasco at the restaurant--what a great face he made! Luckily it was only a tiny dab.

We sat in the back yard at sunset and Sam swung and I pushed while we recounted the story lines from all of our favorite episodes of the Backyardigans, and there are MANY!

We made our own shrimp tempura for dinner and it was delicious and Sam actually ate some of it and declared it tasty and delicious. This was such a triumph for me! I've been wanting shrimp tempura for years but there are no Japanese restaurants near here. I found a box of tempura batter mix while Sam and I were cruising Albertsons in their snazzy kid car carts, and I thought, WOW, I could just MAKE some! Who knew you could just cook your own tasty food? What a world, what an amazing, fantastic world.

We talked about why I am so cranky every 24 days and how it's about an imbalance in my body and not about anything Sam is actually doing, even if I snap at him about doing this or that. I don't know if he really understands this, I can only pray that if we keep talking about it what will stick with him is this, rather than that awful moment when I snap and raise my voice. And I pray, too, to achieve the balance that will allow me to be with these mood swings in a more peaceful way so that they don't affect my son. Or at least to nurture his own sense of empowerment and self, as well as this bond between us so that he is strong enough to withstand these rocky bits, and that he is strong and confident enough not to be pulled under by my raging current.

Oh, and we had cookies and macaroni and cheese for lunch. Te he!

To Comb or Not to Comb...

Sam is sleeping, sprawled out with his incredibly long body flung across the middle of the bed. He hasn't brushed his teeth, or taken a bath, or even washed his hands. And certainly has not brushed his hair. I save all these grooming rituals for the evening, in the time before sleep when he begins to move a little slower and may be more agreeable. But mostly he rejects all attempts at making him look civilized. And this night he has fallen asleep unexpectedly early, which gives me hope that he will rise early and we might get back to a sleep schedule that allows us to get out of the house before the scorching hour out here in the desert.

There are nights, like this one, when I feel as though I am truly making peace with my son's grubby fingernails and unkempt hair. I don't want to live a life with him that is based on me forcing him to submit his body to these grooming rituals that make no sense to him. I won't hold him down for any reason, it's simply not worth the feeling of rage that surfaces when he struggles, and he struggles mightily. He is a little lion of a person with a ferocious will, and I will do everything I can to nurture that strength of mind.

I don't know where that rage comes from inside me, but it comes rushing up, floods me, takes me over, if ever I lay a hand on him in any kind of restraining way when he is trying to escape my ministrations. I have learned to respect his no when he says no, and for that, I have learned, too, to appreciate this rage for the gift it has given me. For if I felt calm and patient through this sort of thing, perhaps I might have become comfortable holding him down, forcing him to do these things which are really all about my own comfort (because it's embarrassing for people to see his hair such a mess, but I really can't find any true way that it's bad for him, I really can't).

But, says the little voice in my head, what about his teeth, what about cavities? What about the tangles in his hair? What about the dirt under his fingernails?

Well, what about them? I have decided to make a tremendous leap of faith and believe in the notion that a grubby but joyful childhood will give my son so much more of what he needs to succeed as a human being than a clean but coerced existence. Sometimes this is a commitment I remake daily, or even several times a day, because there is a lifetime of conditioning in my thought process about dirt and cleanliness and freedom and joy. And I realize that I always believed keeping a child scrupulously clean was how you showed you loved him. And I have come to understand that it's true, this IS one way I could show the rest of the world, whose standards are quite different from my own, that I love my kid. But it's not how I show this to my son.

And the rage, well, I have begun to do some thinking about where it comes from and I don't much like the answers. These are thoughts I would rather just not have. But in this life as a mother, in this life lived in partnership with my child and my husband, I can no longer afford to keep that little stash of things I just don't think about. Because in this life we are living, there is nowhere for me to hide and when I'm pushed up against something I didn't want to deal with, I respond like any cornered animal.

And what I want is to live large and free in a round world without corners. And this world must be of my own making and so I will shine a light on the old dark corners of my mind, the place where the worst memories, the most reactive feelings, the dysfunctional default behaviors are stored. I will unpack them and release them and smooth the corners round until all that is inside me flows like water in a continuous circle of love.

Things We Did Today...

Had a tea party (Sam poured out from his Noah's Ark teapot.)

Painted pictures (they are so lovely!!! One is a glittery blue ocean where the mermaids live.)

Invented a new way to play golf with his Sam size golf set

Went for a run up and down the driveway

Sam visited in the back yard with His Jim

Made dirt soup in the wading pool

Ate lots of good food

Read books

Watched Movies

Laughed

Cried

Snuggled

Did NOT brush out teeth or comb our hair (well, I did after he went to sleep)