The Road

The family singing in a Christmas program
at the Little Theatre in Upland, Ca. Maybe 1984.

This time of year, I am reminded of the many roads we venture to get to our loved ones. Some of these roads being literal, some of them the figurative paths it takes to reach out to those with whom we share a history.

When Robert Frost wrote his famous lines about roads and those “less traveled” I wonder if he had any idea how often he would be quoted and more often I think, misquoted. It is a wonder to me that so many people use his lines to justify taking the path of dire resistance stating that it is, indeed, what has “made all the difference”. Frost seems to be less convinced. He never says whether “all the difference” meant that it was for the better. My best guess is that either road chosen would have made “all the difference”. The fact that he picked one and took it, is really the point.

There are memorable roads in my life.  But  one particular stretch of highway that is so well traveled, it is part of my story in more ways than one, stands out among them: the small piece of the I-15 from San Bernardino, California to Salt Lake City.  Our  own “over the river and through the woods” for the occasional holiday feasts and funerals. It was the road home for my parents, a way back for them, from the busy-ness of Southern California to their families and their complicated histories. And by extension, it was a road to my own complicated history. But we looked forward to it. Every time. There was snow and grandmothers and cousins, old and young. There was a cookie jar, Ralph the dog and a basement with walls teeming with the whispers of memories you could hear but could never really make out. We loved Uncle Dave’s Jam Room and retired Qupie dolls and old cocktail dresses with died-to-match shoes. It was like stepping through a portal from our world into the crystal fragments of the past that never managed to answer as many questions as they raised.

Goofing off before a New Year's performance
(With Jessi-Hurray!) Maybe 1987?

In my earliest memories, we traveled in a maxi-van, mom in the co-pilot position, dad at the wheel and the seven of us (seven at the time) in seats according to seniority and a childhood hierarchy that was mostly unspoken but occasionally dictated with a charlie horse. They were mostly night drives, Dad could make the entire 10 hour drive all in one stretch without having to make frequent bathroom stops and the added cost of having to feed everyone. So the older siblings called dibs on the benches while the younger half rolled around haplessly under foot all night. Sometimes we wouldn’t rouse until we arrived, but I have vivid memories of catching whatever corner of a window I could see through, and watching the movements of the night sky as we hurled ourselves through the desert and mountain terrain, crossing a time zone, climbing altitude, leaving home behind. 

        It wasn’t too long before our travel arrangements took a turn for the extravagant when my parents procured a motor-home, complete with bathroom facilities and kitchenette. The nature of our drives changed. The ability to take our own food and use the facilities when needed meant driving through the night was no longer a necessity. Although  I suspect that it was at night, with the eight of us now, quiet, and the road looking less traveled in the twilight, where my father made his peace with the world. 

      There were times, when we were awakened in the ungodly hours of the morning because we were passing through Vegas and a $1.99 steak and eggs special was too good a deal to pass up.  And so, in came the whole stumbling Nelson brigade, blinking furiously to adjust to the lights and the dinging of the casinos, alive and well with hopefuls, so that we could sup on the morning buffet. 

Coming through the corner of Arizona in the midst of the great stone giants, layered rock in shades of reds and oranges was always impressive and daunting. Long stretches of desert in between small towns is the trademark of the journey. “Watch out for Utah deer," dad would call out as we crossed into Utah State. An inside joke, because despite the signage, we never

saw anything wilder than cattle. 

With all of us awake, maintaining sanity would be an undertaking not for the faint of heart and Mother did her best to help entertain little ones and keep the peace. But there would be more than one exclamation “If you don’t… I’ll pull this over!” and more than once, do I remember them making good on that threat.  As the older siblings got older,  they got better at tuning the little ones out, either lost in books or comfortably wrapped up in their headphones and walkmen.

 Music was a hallmark of our journeys. I can still hear Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton every-time I approach Southern Utah, where the alphabet game gets impossible to finish. But it wasn’t just the music on the speakers that I remember. To this day whenever I find myself on a roadtrip, I cannot help but begin “put another nickle in…” or “when its springtime in the rockies.” These were the songs of the road. My own little family even sings the round, “One bottle of pop” whenever we travel because these are the souveniers of my childhood. This was where I first understood the magic of harmony, listening to my older siblings tune in to each other was like the excitement of the strings tuning at the very beginning of an orchestra. It was practice ground but there was something else about it. If ever my heart was bound in this lifetime to these people, it was in song; it was in nonsense words like “Shidalee-dee” and “Do-Re-Mi”; and it was on the road somewhere between the west coast and the land-locked desert mountains of our ancestors. 

The El Cajon Pass, Las Vegas, Mesquite, St. Geroge all the way to Salt Lake City, I can’t help but think about the pionners that first cut these paths. It is a wonder to me, both in the stinging heat of the summer and the bitter chill of the winter than any of them deicided to make a home here.  Like a ridiculous inversion of fish out of water, these people used the scorcery of faith to draw water out of rocks. 

Over the years I would make this pilgramage again and again from one direction or another. In my youth, when most of our flock had flown, and the motorhome was already an image being created in the dark-room of memory, I would climb into the suburban we now traveled in with the few siblings left and with teenage reluctance made the drive. The chemistry was different. The music changed but still we made the trip to visit our mysterious extended family and take another peek ino our parents' childhoods. 

In my adulthood this road would come to mean different things to me: My first drive  alone would become a right of passage, it was the road for running away from a broken heart, the path to  new freedoms, the trek to a beloved mission, the way to find love, and ultimately my own road home.  And now that I live at the other end, it is the road we take for my children’s peek into my own mysterious childhood, their access to the walls with whispers of my youth and my history and by extension, their own. Because in the end, it is a road well traveled, and that has made all the difference.  

All of us. Present day.

Our Fore-Mothers

    Every now and then, when the waters are still and I can hear the rhythm in my own wave-lengths; when the covers are pulled back and I have nothing pressing me, I can feel it. It’s there in the deepest layers of my being, taking up small space, giving me little trouble but nonetheless, lingering. A sadness, like a tiny tenant wishing to remain anonymous, it resides quietly and speaks in subtle whispers to my soul. Only in the stillest of moments am I even aware of its presence. 

    I’ve spent many sunny afternoons with this inkling of emotion, interrogating it, looking at it under a microscope, trying to identify its origins. When did it get there? What event brought about its residence? I have no recollection of its attachment to any of my own experiences, and so, after much consternation, I have come to the only possible conclusion: as it bares none of the scars of my own heartaches and soul-sickness, it must not belong to me at all. At first I was perplexed by this thought, this idea that I could carry with me someone else’s scar. But the more I thought about it, the clearer it became. You see it’s always been there. It’s always been a part of me, inside of me like the particular shade of auburn in my freckles. I came by it honestly; it was passed down to me, but it was never mine.

    

    And then I thought about the mothers. Only a mother’s heart could be torn so wide and so deep that fragments of it were passed along from one generation to another, the way the corners of my grandmother’s mouth make an appearance in my daughter’s smile. Maybe it was the shattering of hearts when my mother learned that her beloved little brother had killed himself that sent the rippling of broken pieces through a generation. Or maybe it was before that, the day the officers stood on my grandmother’s porch and told her that her husband was hit by a train and would leave her a widow with 5 children at home to care for and 4 more trying to make their way in the world. Perhaps it was the years of loneliness and longing that followed. Or maybe it happened long before these women and maybe it’s bigger than this family tree.

    

    We often pay homage to the fore-fathers who founded our country, but I find myself wondering when we left out our fore-mothers. Their legacy runs further and deeper than just the founding of a nation. They have been bandaging wounds, baking bread and breaking their backs for us since the beginning. As women we have choices today that our grandmothers and great grandmothers couldn’t even dream about, because of the sacrifices and work of women. All these are our mothers. And all these have left scars behind in us.

    

    Emerson writes (and I substitute the pronouns here), “that unity, that over-soul, within which every woman’s particular being is contained and made one with all other; that common heart, of which all sincere conversation is the worship, to which all right action is submission; that overpowering reality which confutes our tricks and talents, and constrains everyone to pass for what she is, and to speak from her character, and not from her tongue, and which evermore tends to pass into our thought and hand and become wisdom, and virtue, and power, and beauty”. Wisdom, virtue, power and beauty: are these not the qualities of our mothers? We are the living experiment of Emerson’s over-soul. This is why I carry the scars of the fore-mothers. Those truths that they lived and the battles that they fought are evident in the deepest recesses of my very being. And what I have discovered about my resident sadness is that it closely resides with a strength that I also know is not my own. A strength that the women who walked before me built, one generation after another of picking up the pieces, mending broken hearts and healing each other’s souls. I find in my moments of most devastating heart-ache, that I have the ability to rise again because the fore-mothers taught me to.

    

    Mother Theresa said, “If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other”. As women, as daughters, as mothers, as sisters, as friends, we belong to each other. Whenever I whisper love and concern for another, the mothers are splinters in my voice; whenever I look out for those around me, the mothers are the shards of gold that make my brown eyes hazel. And I see my own daughters, how they brave their bruised knees and childhood heart-breaks and I know someday they’ll discover that they too carry with them fragments of our sadness and strength: slivers of the fore-mothers. 

            

           

Cold Waters

Water

BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON

The water understands

Civilization well;

It wets my foot, but prettily,

It chills my life, but wittily,

It is not disconcerted,

It is not broken-hearted:

Well used, it decketh joy,

Adorneth, doubleth joy:

Ill used, it will destroy,

In perfect time and measure

With a face of golden pleasure

Elegantly destroy.

It’s like a pinky toe or a freckle. It’s weird and unexplainable but they come by it honestly. My children can’t help it. They are drawn to water by some inner force, some inherent magnetism written in their DNA; its both completely organic and 100% supernatural. And I’ve slowly been coming to grips with this aspect of my family’s oddities since we’ve been in Homer. Let me paint the picture for you: in the customary overcast, heavy skies, temps somewhere in the 50’s my children are up to their necks in glacial waters. They’ve moved beyond flirting with submersion. They don’t bother dipping their toes or daring each other to get wet in their clothes— they simply live with a swimsuit handy and dive in whenever a moment moves them.

One day I found myself sitting on that rocky shore as I have done so many times since our arrival to enjoy the scenery and watch my children romp and play with the tides when I began to notice the people—the people who are enjoying the same beautiful view as I, but something was distracting them. As they strolled down the scenic shoreline taking in the wildlife, something was causing them to pause, chuckle a little to themselves or point something out to their loved one and then move on. It should be noted that anytime you see people stop to look at something in Alaska, there is a very good chance it is something worth looking at. So after several passersby continued this same pattern of pausing, looking and then strolling on, I decided to find out what was so remarkable that several people made a stop to see.  And so I moved closer to the shore as a couple was stopped to look and I was surprised to find that what was causing their pause and so many before them, was not a whale, as I had hoped, or sea otters, which I suspected, but rather it was children. Four to be exact, playing in the icy waters like they’re sunning in the tropics. That’s when it occurred to me that my family might have a problem.

I realize now, of course, I should have seen it all along. Exhibit A) When Brigham proposed. It was beautiful mid-July in Salt Lake City. Brig had been away for a month and we were anxious to spend some time together. Brig wanted to take me to a river. It wasn’t an elaborate, planned out proposal with flowers, or diamonds lodged in food or family members hiding away to take pictures. In fact, Brig didn’t take me there with the intention of proposing. We had an outdoorsy courtship and I’m always up for something fun, so we decided to jump in a river and on a whim, he asked me to marry him. Looking back, I know now that it’s the cold water that first inspired him.

Cut to: engaged Brigham and Morinda camping at Mary Lake with Brig’s brother Jared and his wife, Melissa. After a short hike and setting up camp, the first order of business was jumping off a cliff into the water. I was, of course, wanting to make good on his recent commitment and so I had no intention of turning down an opportunity to be the impressive fiancé. After he assured me that the water “wasn’t too cold” and without so much as dipping a toe first, I followed him to the top of a great rock and as the saying goes, I followed him off a cliff. The fall was not so bad, but over all too quickly and deep into the chill I submerged . The cold of the waters was a shock to the system and it wasn’t long before my teeth began to chatter. Needless to say, he was happy we had both taken the plunge (as another saying goes).

 I hadn’t really connected the dots by this time. Perhaps I had just never known anyone that liked water as much as he. But then there were other experiences, like the time we were backpacking in Europe and visiting the Holy Mecca of Lourdes, France. Brigham found the healing waters there so inviting, he did a quick look around to see if anyone was watching and then before I knew what was going on, he had dropped every stitch and morsel he had on his person along the wayside and slipped into the water. (Incidentally, I did take a few photos with the intention of documenting the occasion, but the Albertson’s Photo Center didn’t develop those few and I have a sneaking suspicion it had something to do with the porcelain white derriere that they featured.) While one would think that I would catch on to a recurring theme or better yet, a deeply rooted obsession, I merely passed it off as Brig just being, well, Brigham. It likely began long before he ever darkened my basement apartment doorway. And I, having now secured my catch, so to speak, do not even pretend that jumping into the cold water is anything other than some form of self-deprecation. Lucky for Brig, his line of work allows him a lot of travel and time in the great outdoors,  and so he takes it upon himself to take a plunge whenever and wherever the opportunity arises. In an attempt to be less offensive he travels with an American Flag speedo wherever he goes, donning it when the waters invite him.

But then we had children. And as all parents are, we were eager to see how their personalities would develop and what traits they would inherit from which families. And how thrilled we are that Tatum has red hair and how lucky that Cleo has an electrifying energy and punny sense of humor; and isn’t it lovely that Eli has big saucer eyes like his Nelson relatives and how lucky Miss Ivy Maude has beautiful Cottam cheekbones. And every last one of them loves the water. Cold water. The colder, the better.  And so I am left with no other conclusion than that it is part of their genetic make-up like earlobes or knuckle hair. Whenever we go for a hike, like their dad, they always go prepared for the likelihood that there will be water. And it isn’t really about swimming. They just want to get in and completely immerse, following the way of the Good Lord's salubrious dip in the waters of Jordan.  And perhaps, they might argue, that it is there in the sanctifying cleanse of the waters, where they sense their salvation. For all water is their holy water and with every plunge, their communion is sweet.

The Kids Write

          If you know us, and most of you do, then you know that we tend to parent on… well, lets call it a very long leash. We believe that skinned knees and dirty faces are the signs of a well spent childhood. We think kids should climb trees and play in the mud and ride bikes to the local market without parents hovering. But with all the freedoms we allow our children, we are sticklers about a few things. The first of which is manners, because there is no excuse for bad manners and no reason not to teach children when they are very young. And bed times, because I need the extra couple of hours of quiet time and alone time with my husband and they need the sleep. And in the summer time when it seems like it should be endless outdoor fun, my kids have to do some reading and writing (and occasionally math facts, but we’re not that great on those) every morning before they can go out.

            This last one applies even and sometimes especially when we’re traveling. Here in Alaska our routine starts with breakfast together and then we get dressed and tidy up our space. Right now that involves the kids stuffing their sleeping bags and putting away their pajamas and putting on their first set of clothes (they are currently going through 2-3 sets of clothes a day depending on how often they play in the water). Once they’ve done these things they come to the kitchen/dining area where I am cleaning up breakfast and they get out their notebooks. Now my older girls, I can just set them loose with their writing. I typically give them free reign on what the want to write. This week I insisted that it be about Alaska so you’ll see that Tatum wrote a bit of poetry and Cleo is doing a little reporting on our journey. Eli and Ivy Maude need a little more help. All the kids wrote, edited and typed their pieces all week this last week. Except for Ivy Maude, her development at this point depends on that handwriting so hers will be handwritten. Once the children are through with their writing and reading in the mornings they are free to the outdoors where the rest of their learning is taking place.

I may have taken some parenting advice  along the way from A River Runs Through It. Norman Maclean writes, “Every afternoon I was set free, untutored and untouched until supper to learn on my own the natural side of God’s order. And there could be no better place to learn than the Montana of my youth”.  I would say, there is no better place for my children now than the Alaska of this summer. I decided to start a blog as a way to practice my own writing, but I realized what a great way to motivate the kids in their summer writing and a great experience for them to see the reaction of having it read. If you have a moment to make a comment, do. It’s like a little reward for their hard work.

If our family had a Poet Laureate, Tatum would be it. She got her
 mother's love of words and is on the way to being a better writer
than I am by next year. Photo cred: Cleo

Low-tide Island

By: Tatum Cottam

I watch the Island

Rise out of the rippling sea,

Like a whale rising for breath;

as the tide falls back further,

Showing the connection,

Or bridge

Between magic,

And the science our minds can nurse.

But,

All my science lies on the other side,

Mixed with the bewitched beauty of faith,

The island we can wrap our fingers around;

Away from the plushy abode,

Where I dwell,

Now out…

away.

 Rush of riffling waves splatter my toes,

Toes curl under,

And the smell of magic remembers to trot on my freckles,

Mountains of opaque reality face,

The unconcerned reality of my island,

I wish my eyes were big enough to take

 it all in. 

Cleo is a natural reporter, especially when it comes
to exposing the injustices brought on
by her younger brother. Photo Cred: Tatum

Alaska: The beginning

by: Cleo

   I was sick when we flew in to the Anchorage airport at 11:30 p.m. We drove to the Hampton hotel got our room key, went to our room, and fell asleep. In the morning we woke up at 7:30 a.m. even though we all fell asleep at midnight the night before. It took us a little while to really wake up. Also I had a cold so it took me a little longer. After we did wake up we went to the hotel breakfast. For breakfast I had half a waffle, a yogurt, and a hot chocolate. Then my mom asked me to help my little sister Ivy get a hot chocolate. So Ivy and I went over to the hot cocoa machine and filled the cup too high, so I asked Ivy to slurp the top but she was too cantankerous and said no, and accidentally tipped all the steaming hot cocoa on my hands! Boy, it hurt a lot. So, my mom took me back to our hotel room and put cold rags on my hands to cool the burn down. About 5 minutes later everyone came in and the first thing I said was “did you bring MY hot cocoa?” then “can we go swimming in the hotel pool?”. My dad said no and yes. ( No to cocoa and yes to swimming ). We swam for about 30 minutes. Then we went to Homer. It was a beautiful but long four hour drive. We only had one stop at a cute little restaurant 1) Because we had to eat and 2) My dad had a meeting in Homer he had to get back for. 

 Note to reader: This past week has been the best week of my life. But the kids needs to work on no fighting though. I hope we can stop fighting before this trip ends. By the way I am not sick any more.

Eli's avante-garde poetic style keeps us
always guessing what he'll produce next.

4 Wheelers by: Eli

Last Monday  we  went  on   4 WHEELERS. I put  my hands o n the  handlebars. I went with  my mom   but  I  want  to  ride by myself. Dad says  maybe   next time I can steer.

These Windows: First days in Alaska

                                                            ...I am
paying attention to small beauties,
whatever I have--as if it were our duty
to find things to love, to bind ourselves to this world.   
                                     -Sharon Olds, "Little Things"                                      

     
        There are windows where I am that have cast some kind of enchantment on me. You, dear reader, might call it a neuroses, an addiction, or just a good old-fashioned obsession the way they draw me in, hold my gaze and make it difficult for me to look away. Sometimes I think I came all this way just to watch the Kachemak Bay from these windows. Something about this scene, untouched and alive, in constant motion, silenced by the transparent barrier, like a moving picture that never ceases to surprise me.                       
           

         The windows allow me the power of observation, from a sort of perch that gives me the perspective of seeing just a portion of the bay through a magnifying glass.  The rhythm of her very waters is a dance like a debutant rippling her soft skirts, spreading them across the rock and sand with her generous invitation to all living creatures. She beckons the birds of her neighborhood to come and be fed, be filled, and be bathed in her spring rush. Graciously, the gulls take up the invitation to dine on the bounty she has to offer. The eagles, regal and stately as any Lord or Lady of the bluest blood, spread an impressive wingspan and soar past my windows, snubbing my stare, seeking some daily refreshment in the bay. I am amazed at the agility and precision with which they dive and retrieve an unsuspecting fish who seems to be equally fighting for his last breath and wishing for it. In the evenings, I watch her like a mother bouncing and coddling the sea otters like toddlers on her lap when they come to play and bob along her shores. All this, as the stoic mountains and glaciers look on from the distance, like the saints and apostles adorning Notre Dame. 

             The problem is that the more I watch through these windows, the more difficult I find that it is to tear myself away. I do get out and feel and smell and hear this magnificent place, but the view from the windows is like a drug. Through them I see miraculous pictures of the majestic, but unassuming pulse of wildlife moving, breathing before my eyes. I am a slave to the window’s charms, afraid to look away, afraid that I’ll miss something spectacular. I’ve heard rumors that a pod of orcas occasionally moves through this bay. I desperately want to see them and so I return to the windows, again and again, to maintain my vantage point and take in all it has to offer.  I haven’t seen any whales yet, but my view never disappoints. 

     Today I found myself watching my children through the glass. They are just far enough away to be out of earshot and just close enough for me to observe the details in their delicate, clumsy play. I watch them in a way that I’ve never seen them before. Like I’m watching them for the first time in their natural habitat. They too are unable to resist the hospitality of the bay with all her mystical incantations. Just like the wildlife I observe taking care of its daily business, I watch my children manage the business of childhood, dancing under an intrepid sky, running (either fully clothed or nearly naked) in and out of the ice cold-water unaware of its stifling chill, giving in to preternatural impulses, singing or fighting or bathing in dirt. Among the rocks and the bones they find their playthings and with the birds and the fish, their playmates.  I enjoy my perch from which I observe because there I watch my children less as a mother and more as one of a species. Were I standing next to them, I would at the very least discourage much of their unruly behavior and most likely bring it to a halt entirely. But instead I watch it play out. All of it, the bare-footed dancing, the fighting, their inherent fearlessness like indomitable Peter Pan and his entire crew of Lost Boys.  I see them in a way, the way we should all be seen, as creatures grown out of the dirt earth reaching out to her for an experience, for the breath of living. 

Later, the children and I took a long walk along the spit. We visited some of the little shops along the roadside, exploring the local human wildlife and then walked back along the beaches. I told my kids about the spell that the windows have put me under.

“I’m afraid if I look away,” I said,  “I’ll miss something amazing*.”

 To which my daughter, with all the reckless certainty of a 12 year old and without a moment’s hesitation responded, “That puts you in a very tricky situation. If you look away you might miss something amazing, but if you don’t look away you might miss something amazing.”

The rest of the walk back the kids took turns pointing out the things that they thought were amazing. For one it was a crab shell in one piece and another it was a cartwheel she just learned to do. For one daughter it was the way the tide swelled and receded and for my son it was the feel of the sand and shells between his toes.

I'm still drawn to these windows, and I still watch through them intent on witnessing every little miracle they have to offer me, but I'm realizing maybe its not really these windows. And maybe its not even this place. Maybe it’s a removal from something in my head or forgetting something I thought was important. And maybe it has something to do with what I’m looking for; what I’m expecting to find. Its something the children are teaching me: its in the details, the little things, the easily overlooked.  Its about looking for windows.

*Merriam-Webster’s full definition for amazing: causing amazement, great wonder, or surprise.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/amazing

Spray-Paint

There are moments when words fail me and language becomes what it’s always been, this ghost of my experience. On one particular Saturday afternoon just such a moment left me speechless and not just because I was suffering from a cold and had no voice to speak of, but like a phantom, the words vanished into thin air and I was left with nothing but the backside of a locked bathroom door and a roll of toilet paper (two-ply) to console me.

            It was the way Tatum came running into my bedroom, where I was taking the afternoon to convalesce, being husbandless for 3 weeks by this time, having only recently finished writing my finals and being in the usual post-semester bodily melt-down (which usually consists of a cold and laryngitis). She said with hurried worry, “Mom, you need to come see this”. Looking back I think it was the just the way she said, Mom,  like a felled tree dropping and disturbing a quiet forest floor or the axe that turns it to winter wood-piles. That one syllable fell from her lips with a weight causing my sinus-infected, well-furrowed brow to do what it does best. And then she stood there. And I took a moment. And there we were hovering beneath the words she had uttered, each awaiting something more from the other.

            Now it should be noted that I am generally fond of surprises. I love a surprise bouquet of just about anything or finding love notes scrawled with precious immature dexterity; I love that day I happen to wander into a store and that one dress I’ve been eyeing for a month is on clearance and my size; I’m fond of unexpected rain-showers and the day the tulips bloom.  But this day, in this moment, I knew this was not a surprise I would either like or want. And the fact that Tatum wasn’t disclosing any more information was not boding well either.

“Just tell me something, anything,” I struggled to squeak out with my broken and

breathy voice. “Prepare me for it.”

But she said nothing.  And I followed.

There was an immediate scurry about me. It’s a bit of a fog now, but I’m quite

sure that the four of my children multiplied into several hundred and they were moving about me quickly, equally curious and terrified of my reaction, deciding finally to dash out of sight; this only exacerbating my uneasy anticipation. And so I blew my nose and pressed on, certain that neighbor children were stopping and bracing themselves for the mysterious unveiling.

As I followed Tatum into the front yard I saw it. Spray paint. Blue spray-paint, a hue somewhere between Superman’s tights and a blue-raspberry Slurpee. Blue spray paint blobs and blotches here and there throughout the driveway. The red van tagged with a swirl on one side, a swish on the other and a swag on the hood. The truck, a small blue stripe; the mailbox swizzled blue; the shed, both blue and white in a streak cutting its brown façade horizontally into two; the black metal fences still dripping blue and even a tree did not escape the spray-paint make-over.

            By now Tatum was saying something. I don’t know what, I can only make out the name “Eli”. I wheeled around nearly falling to the ground with my heavy-aching head and looked for him. I tried calling his name but whatever voice there was left was so loaded with emotion, nothing came out. I walked into the house and there he stood. His guilty fingers baring blue evidence and his fearful eyes looking to beg for a pardon. And that is the moment the words failed me.

            Again, children scattered, parting like the red sea for Moses, perhaps knowing their mother was at the end of her rope. I moved past them and into my bathroom where I began to cry. Not because anything precious had been ruined and certainly not mourning the marks to an already over grown and neglected front yard. It was just a moment that reminded me that I am imperfect, as a mother, as a woman, as a human being. I can’t do it all. I cried because despite my daily effort to somehow master my many imperfections, I am flawed. And as the tears flowed a furious amount of texting to my sisters commenced because surely, they could help me laugh, and I needed desperately to find a way to laugh about the whole ordeal. For the next ten minutes little love notes were passed under the bathroom door, children asked what they could do to help and even offered to make dinner. And all this 20 minutes before we needed to be at a piano recital. Necessity required me to pull it together.

            Four days later a nice man came to install our new internet connection and asked me to come see where the box was being put on the back of the house. As I walked through my back patio I discovered the last little piece of evidence left behind by my 8 year old vandal. When I say little, I mean big. There scrawled across the 70’s yellow brick and concrete of the house next to the sliding door was the word MOM with a little heart sprayed just beneath it. There was that word again staring at me with all its urgency and need and warmth and breadth and undone wholeness.  I could hear the din of the installer-guy grumbling something about kids these days but I listened to none of it. I only heard my children’s voices and the weight of that word coming down once again upon me. And I laughed.

            We’re making efforts to clean and paint over the blue whirlwind that splotched our home but I’ve decided that the MOM is going to stay. Sure it makes the back of my house look cheap but it’s these little (and sometimes big) imperfections that give my life depth. It’s a reminder of the weight of that word and what it means to me. It’s a souvenir from this moment in my journey and imperfect as it may be, it is my life. And I can laugh about it.