It’s hard finding morning time for morning pages. I resolved to do them at night, after the boys went to bed. This made sense because that is when my personal day begins. They were tedious to write in their entirety; I found myself consistently checking my watch at twenty minutes. Maybe twenty minutes would be a more ideal measure of time for me? When I have a 3 hour workday, I’m anxious to get work done, so I have to remind myself that morning pages are indirect work. And the pages, they worked to an extent, but this week has been emotionally-charged and turbulent. Both boys have been sick and Damon pulled a muscle in his back on Friday. Added deadlines and housework have commandeered my time and attention.

I was surprised to find myself writing repeatedly about feeling the need to take the family out of the house for a year. I have strong wanderlust, and I always have, but it feels particularly strong right now. Still, it won’t happen anytime soon, it’s too expensive and I’d prefer living on a boat, which we can’t do (even if it were affordable) until Chas is out of diapers. Imagine that! (Although I know it’s possible –there’s a link out there somewhere I saw once, a photograph of fifteen-odd cloth diapers hung to dry on the mast of a docked sailboat. So inspiring!)

I did the artists date several times this week, a total drug in itself. I have a new travel set of watercolors that fits nicely between diapers and toys in my bag. And a new moleskine notebook, this one with graph paper, that I may begin doing morning collages. In the evening.

What suprised me most this week? Realizing just how important it is to PLAY. Something I thought just might make a little difference apparently makes a BIG difference. I have been trying to remember what I enjoyed doing most as a child:

1. going exploring through the neighborhood, catching reptiles and bugs.
2. drawing. a lot.
3. interviewing my stuffed animals, recording the interview on a portable tape recorder.
4. collecting rocks.
5. watching horses, trying to be with them
6. gardening.
7. taking care of wounded animals.
8. roaming the vet school stalls at TAMU after kindergarten.
9. drawing. a lot.
10. reading. a lot.
11. hanging out in my room

It gave me hints. I realized why I enjoyed being a student in dental school (being bookish, being in a santitized building, feeling important to other people). Why I wanted to be a veterinarian when I was little (and being reprimanded by my grandparents, since it didn’t afford the salary of a medical doctor), why I will always want to be around horses and livestock, and farm, and garden. Read. Explore. I enjoyed reconnecting with my young self through this exercise. It gave me direction for the future (I’m on the right track for now, I think).

I want to read how the rest of the AW bloggers are doing but, oh well, there’s no reading this week. I’m being forced into ignorance. Can’t say it’s my fault this time.

When I was four.
I remember playing with my dad’s Koh-I-Noor Rapidographs until the points broke off, and pulling bit after sticky bit off his gum erasers. But I never came across his crow quill pens. Where did he hide them, as a medical illustrator?
Ford, also four, loves to dig through and (accidentally) destroy my art supplies, crow quills included. He uses them as wands. I’ve found sewing machine pressure feet discarded on the floor after being used as rocketships, bobbins (previously used as Ty-fighters) under sofas. I never manage to keep it all concealed.

On a Japanese prayer wall, one anonymous child wrote:

It rained. It rained all day, beginning with bright flashes at midnight and ending with a shroud of mist on Sunday. This afternoon, two days after the relieving episode, the grass is still moist. Is our burn ban over? Hopefully not; this morning Ford and Chas followed me outside to the garden, where they leaned over to watch me burn the raffia and summer grass that decorated the rim of Bird’s fishbowl. Quickly, the straw crackled into embers, and died into crumbly strings that we blew into the rosemary, which was still dewey. Before lunch, we had bought a new betta; the new one is named Angie and he is a vigorous red. Funny, I never thought to photograph the morning.

Ford got a new bike on Sunday. Electric blue, like mine, it inspired him to go very fast. We took him to the veloway, where we could ride and skate beside him for three and a half miles. Around the third quarter, his energy began to wane, and after Ford’s excessive whining, Damon reluctantly carried the squat little bike the rest of the way, while I taxied him in the bike trailer. We continued to loop for another half hour, during which I thought about my own famous fallouts. Like the time I showed up for team practice on the first day, claiming I was an intermediate rider, and spent the rest of the evening correcting myself on an overly large, very young thoroughbred who felt like a Ferrari on wet pavement. Although I didn’t quit, I did nearly shit in my pants and I definitely didn’t make Intermediate.

Yesterday, we took the boys to the Children’s Museum, where I found this:

With the grasses outside, glorious from Fall but wet from the rain, I thought we’d make a bunch of these for a wall parade. It didn’t happen today, so we’ll try doing this tomorrow. It may even be a good idea to use them for Christmas tree ornaments next year? I want a whole herd of them…

It rained. It rained all day, beginning with bright flashes at midnight and ending with a shroud of mist on Sunday. This afternoon, two days after the relieving episode, the grass is still moist. Is our burn ban over? Hopefully not; this morning Ford and Chas followed me outside to the garden, where they leaned over to watch me burn the raffia and summer grass that decorated the rim of Bird’s fishbowl. Quickly, the straw crackled into embers, and died into crumbly strings that we blew into the rosemary, which was still dewey. Before lunch, we had bought a new betta; the new one is named Angie and he is a vigorous red. Funny, I never thought to photograph the morning.

Ford got a new bike on Sunday. Electric blue, like mine, it inspired him to go very fast. We took him to the veloway, where we could ride and skate beside him for three and a half miles. Around the third quarter, his energy began to wane, and after Ford’s excessive whining, Damon reluctantly carried the squat little bike the rest of the way, while I taxied him in the bike trailer. We continued to loop for another half hour, during which I thought about my own famous fallouts. Like the time I showed up for team practice on the first day, claiming I was an intermediate rider, and spent the rest of the evening correcting myself on an overly large, very young thoroughbred who felt like a Ferrari on wet pavement. Although I didn’t quit, I did nearly shit in my pants and I definitely didn’t make Intermediate.

Yesterday, we took the boys to the Children’s Museum, where I found this:

With the grasses outside, glorious from Fall but wet from the rain, I thought we’d make a bunch of these for a wall parade. It didn’t happen today, so we’ll try doing this tomorrow. It may even be a good idea to use them for Christmas tree ornaments next year? I want a whole herd of them…

It rained. It rained all day, beginning with bright flashes at midnight and ending with a shroud of mist on Sunday. This afternoon, two days after the relieving episode, the grass is still moist. Is our burn ban over? Hopefully not; this morning Ford and Chas followed me outside to the garden, where they leaned over to watch me burn the raffia and summer grass that decorated the rim of Bird’s fishbowl. Quickly, the straw crackled into embers, and died into crumbly strings that we blew into the rosemary, which was still dewey. Before lunch, we had bought a new betta; the new one is named Angie and he is a vigorous red. Funny, I never thought to photograph the morning.

Ford got a new bike on Sunday. Electric blue, like mine, it inspired him to go very fast. We took him to the veloway, where we could ride and skate beside him for three and a half miles. Around the third quarter, his energy began to wane, and after Ford’s excessive whining, Damon reluctantly carried the squat little bike the rest of the way, while I taxied him in the bike trailer. We continued to loop for another half hour, during which I thought about my own famous fallouts. Like the time I showed up for team practice on the first day, claiming I was an intermediate rider, and spent the rest of the evening correcting myself on an overly large, very young thoroughbred who felt like a Ferrari on wet pavement. Although I didn’t quit, I did nearly shit in my pants and I definitely didn’t make Intermediate.

Yesterday, we took the boys to the Children’s Museum, where I found this:

With the grasses outside, glorious from Fall but wet from the rain, I thought we’d make a bunch of these for a wall parade. It didn’t happen today, so we’ll try doing this tomorrow. It may even be a good idea to use them for Christmas tree ornaments next year? I want a whole herd of them…

I am sitting atop a five year-old blue area rug as the timid, gangly librarian greets us with her friend, the fifty year-old once-purple spider puppet. Her eyes are so tiny that I find myself searching for the person beneath them, and out it peeks with a nervous giggle as she shifts her weight in the chair. Awkwardly, I encourage Chas to sing the Itsy Bitsy Spider; it’s surreal to be repeating this same archaic fingerplay with my children. I’m tired of this, and I’ll not reminisce about this moment when I am sixty-four. The Itsy Bitsy Spider has hung around the waterspout way too long, it needs a new venue, to broaden its horizons. I suggest setting sail for the Spanish riviera.

Ford is being patient as I tolerate the spider song. He understands the pain; I think he feels it himself. He tumbles in breakdance acrobatics around the three other mother-child pairs, threatening their two year-oldness with his four year-old rebellion. One mother flinches as Ford jumps in her face. What is he doing?! But wait! This is his method, and it’s difficult being completely objective when reacting so easy. But I call him closer. He jumps back in my direction, clearly to tell me off, and I find myself flinching.

“These songs are not my kind of songs. My kind of songs are…,” his straw-colored curls bounce and his eyes flare, “the White Stripes, and the Strokes, and Beck, and Kings of Leon….,”
Blood flushes to my face, and I find relief when I realize these mothers probably have never heard of Kings of Leon, much less trained their ears to understand the slurred lyrics (not that Ford has),
“…this music is na-nee na-nee BOH-ring…”

My thighs, burning holes through my pants, heave as I haul the combined weight of two kids in the bike trailer and Damon, freeloading off his skateboard behind me. He coasts back there like some urban remora, silently clinging to the back of the bike trailer from his longboard, while Ford yells, “Hurry up, taxi! Mommy the wedgie-taxi! Wedgie, poopy taxi, HA!”
“HEEeeYA! MULE,” echoes Damon, like some 6 foot 2 Yosemite Sam that he is.

Writing is hard, but joy comes easily these days. I am rehashing my way through The Artist’s Way* again after a 6 year hiatus, and digging new roots in fertile soil. I’ve been drifting about for a while, tendrils outstretched, and feel ready now to grow down instead of laterally; the plant is strong but the roots are weak.

I’ve put my mind to naming the sources of joy and I’ve found that it comes from being aware of my footsteps and playing a lot. There may be events unfolding around me, but they may as well not be there when I am engaged. Being aware, I’ve found over the years, is what has given me fullness and sanity. Oddly, I ran across a passage in week 2 of The Artists Way that refers to this same phenomenon: Julia Cameron, in describing how her grandmother “made do” with the circumstances her husband left her (financial instability and a wild ride on the waves of success and failure), remarked about her mother’s capacity to be very much in the now, a reporter of life around her. Not focusing on regrets or fearing the future, she was able to immerse herself in experience, a great way to cope and remain sane.
“Attention is the act of connection,” says Julia. “My grandmother knew what a painful life had taught her: success or failure, the truth of a life really has little to do with its quality. The quality of life is in proportion, always, to the capacity for delight. The capacity for delight is the gift of laying attention.”

How do other people stay sane? Here are a few obvious secrets:
I watched a documentary last night on a female stunt pilot, who enjoyed the way flying dangerously required so much focus that everything else slipped out of her periphery. Surely a big wave surfer feels the same way, risking his life each wave as he directs every neuron to the dynamic matter and energy thundering around him. I imagine a surgeon feels a similar zen, perhaps a more cerebral, fine-motor adaptation of the same principal, or a writer, for that matter (although, as Robert Cormier once said, “The beautiful part of writing is that you don’t have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon.”).

Another way I find sanity: watching my enthusiasm of the outdoors trickle down to my kids, watching them web together information on the world around them, making connections that, in turn, connect them to earth. When I am outside appreciating the world around me, it’s infectous; I can’t help sharing it with the kids, with others. It hasn’t taken many brainstorming sessions to discover purpose behind this. I want others to see. I want others to experience and feel joy in his or her footsteps, trying to banish regrets and ignore to-do lists, even if for five mintes at a time. Little bursts of sanity provide hours of empowerment.

I think of other writers who have fostered this capacity for seeing: Annie Dillard, when she wrote Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Anne Lammott and Operating Instructions, Rachel Carson, and the late Provensens, who wrote my favorite picture book as a child: Our Animal Friends at Maple Hill Farm. There are others, but these are favorites. What are yours? Have you seen much lately? Assuming that, like me, you feel periodic insanity, what centers you and makes you sane?

*Other Artist’s Way bloggers have been inspired by Kat’s Paws. I guess I can consider myself one if I just said “others.”