This writing doesn’t know what it wants to be yet, but I’ll share it anyway.

Press On ***

The roaring wind burns her face. It rips her sand-colored hair in every direction, tearing apart the thick braid that hangs down her back. A gust propels her forward and then whips around and shoves her back again. The sky is heavy gray with thick clouds racing through the sky as though they are being chased by the same Fearful Thing that chases the little girl. She would go back if she could – behind her is Familiar. Behind her is Comfortable. If the Thing were not behind her, she would race back to the Mundane. The Mundane is safe and predictable. Not like this wind and the thunder that shakes the ground like an earthquake. The girl stumbles and gashes her knee on a sharp rock. Even though it hurts and the blood is oozing out, running down her bony shin and soaking into the lace of her white sock, she doesn’t cry out or let even a single tear make its way out of her bloodshot eyes.

It isn’t the first time she’s fallen; she has a deep scar on her chin from when she fell while struggling to get up a steep hill with loose gravel and another on her hand from when she lost her balance while trying to cross a stream. New and old bruises color her elbows and knees shades of brown, green, blue, and purple. The little girl had known that it wouldn’t exactly be fun when she left the Mundane, but had she known that it would hurt so bad, she might not have left. Promises of Excitement, Fulfillment, and Success had piqued her curiosity, making the Unknown seem like a wonderful adventure. Even this terrifyingly fierce wind had seemed thrilling at first. It wasn’t long, though, before she encountered the Fearful Thing.

It was right after the first time she fell and she discovered that pain was quite unpleasant; it was something she’d never felt before. Not knowing if there was more Distress ahead, she chose to return to Complacency, to Comfort. Yet as soon as she’d turned around, the Fearful Thing attacked her, stabbing her through the heart with an invisible blade. The bloodless wound burned far worse than the scrapes and bruises she’d sustained during her fall. Try as she might, she couldn’t get around the Thing; going back meant Death. And Death, certainly, was far worse than either the Mundane or the Unknown. Since she could never return to the Familiar, she pressed on into the growling storm – each step somehow easing the pain in her heart.

Now, as she tries to stop her knee from bleeding, the girl wishes she could see the Outcome. If only she knew how much farther she had to go, it would not be so tempting to give in to the Fearful Thing. It’s times like this – when she feels so battered and weary – that she considers just laying down and letting the Thing win. Perhaps it would be over quickly and she could be at peace. If she were utterly alone in her journey, she would give up. But she’s not. Every now and again her path crosses the path of someone else heading toward the Unknown. They all have the same look on their faces – a mixture of Fear and Determination. It gives her Courage. Sometimes, she passes someone going the opposite direction – toward the Mundane – and they are wearing masks with huge smiles on them. She can see their eyes, though, and they look Empty.

The blood stops flowing and the child gingerly bends her leg to see if it will bleed again. It doesn’t. So she stands up and brushes the dirt from her dress. The wind howls and wails at her but she is used to its opposition and ignores it. She begins walking just as rain begins to gush from the sky. There’s no place to hide from it; she’s looked before. It’s best just to keep going and hope the storm subsides quickly. This time, however, she is not instantly soaked because a Friend comes up beside her; someone on the same journey as she. The Friend has brought an umbrella and is holding it over the girl. The two put their arms around each other – it’s easier to share the canopy that way. Together they continue their journey.

 

 

 

 

 

***This is truly a rough draft. I’ve reread it and I don’t know what to do with it or what to call it. But my heart is on my sleeve if my sleeve is your computer screen.

Rest in peace, Old Friend

This weekend was a sad one for our family. We had to lay an old friend to rest. You may recall when I introduced this friend to you about a year and a half ago, but if you don’t… Here are a few posts to catch you up:

Go ahead, laugh.

I am woman.

Holy lawn mower, Batman! 

Well, at the end of last fall, I knew it was coming. All the black smoke billowing out from the exhaust pipe, the way I smelled like I’d been working in a garage all day, the extraordinarily loud belching… The beast was crying out for mercy. So this weekend, I opened the shed and bid my friend good-bye.

No more scalping the yard because the deck won’t go any higher (which means no more bottoming out every time I go from the lawn to the driveway). No more adding oil every time I mow the lawn. No more driving around like a lunatic – with (w)reckless abandon. No more jump starting the Simplicity with a car. And no more guessing what gear I’m in.

I’ll admit, I felt a twinge of guilt and betrayal as I browsed through the lawn tractor section of Lowe’s website. All that melted away when my dad and I tried to pump up the tires one last time so we could push the old mower to my neighbor’s house. (He promised to disassemble it with great care and respect.) Both front tires were so flat that no air would stay in them – we couldn’t pump fast enough to make the tire meet the rim. It is not easy to push a riding mower with two flat tires up a wet hill.

The last trace of guilt disappeared today as I mowed the lawn with our brand-spankin’ new Troy-Bilt lawn mower. That puppy can freakin’ mow a lawn, people. 46 inch deck. 22 horsepower engine. And a cup holder. (Cue the manly grunt from Tim Allen.)

A cup holder.

On my lawn mower.

Seriously – I am in love. Sure, I’ll miss lurching forward as I take my foot off the brake pedal. And I won’t be able to go crashing over the sewer grate in the front yard anymore. The sound of the deck bottoming out on the concrete of our driveway was somehow comforting. It’s the end of an era.

And the beginning of a new era. Today, I set the deck at the 4th level and it’s still higher than the old mower was at it’s highest setting. I pushed the lever into “forward” (this has no gears, just a lever that you move forward to go faster and backward to slow down) and eased forward gracefully. (I’m sure the neighbors were disappointed that I won’t be so entertaining from now on. I’ll have to start mowing in a clown costume or something.)

My new mower is so shiny and new, I might have to actually start cleaning the mower sometimes. And changing the oil and filters on a regular basis. It feels like a lot to do for a silly lawn tractor, but I feel the need to be kind to this new member of our family.

After all, it has a cup holder.

So… I weighed myself.

And I didn’t explode. Or melt. Or burst into tears.

Amazingly, I’ve maintained (within a pound or two) my weight for the past 3 years. I’m shocked. I don’t eat the best foods. In fact, food is my comfort fairly often. It’s also my enemy – makes for awkward conversations – because I always beat myself up when I use it for comfort. What’s funny is, I bet I’ve lost muscle and gained fat. Because I just can’t do anything I used to do. Heck, I went on a walk the other night and kind of wished I hadn’t because it just sent my head into craziness.

Anyway… I have a bunch of stuff that’s been floating through my brain, but I can’t figure out how not to bore you all. (However many of you there may be.)

I don’t plan to weigh myself often. I was just curious. And the scale is hidden by our water pump and I happened to be checking something on the pump so I got out the scale.

Ok, well, I’m sleepy and (of course) I have a headache.

And the Award Goes to…

This morning, I made plans for the day. Simple plans, really.

1. Get a shower.
2. Go to the library.
3. Get groceries.

I was ready to go before 9:30 (in the morning, even) – not bad considering that I hadn’t done my grocery list until after breakfast. The kids were ready by then, too. “Get the books,” I said to the kids while I gathered the CDs we’d borrowed. I’m sure you can predict what happened. One of the books was missing. This was especially amazing because there were only two kids’ books checked out; essentially, half the books were missing.

No problem – kids are mostly blind and I hadn’t looked for myself yet.

I started in the basement. Had it not been for the fact that I’ve politely asked fifteen million times, then commanded another twelve million times, then finally begging and pleading on my hands and knees for them to please please please put their toys away when they finished playing with them – had it not been for that, I might not have exploded.

The carpet was barely visible under their mess of toys and scraps of paper they’d used for “crafts” and “origami.”

Sadly, (pathetically?) I began screaming like a toddler. Some nonsense about how I was going to just throw all their toys away forever and ever because, really, is it so flipping hard to play with something, decide you’re done, and then put it back where you got it? If they would put away things when they’ve finished playing with them, there wouldn’t be a million toys to pick up.

In fact, I’ve already put most of their toys in the office – off limits – so that they have fewer things to put away. I very loudly pointed that out to my children who promptly began crying. If only that had been the worst of my tantrum. (As I sit here, Sienna is next to me, pretending to read out loud and in her story, the boy loves his mommy. That mommy mustn’t be much like me.)

No, I didn’t stop there. I ran upstairs, my children following, and got the trash can and threw away all the toys they constantly never put away – toy rings, plastic doll bottles, “origami” they’d done. Now, I don’t feel guilty for throwing that stuff away. It was all junk – not worth giving away and certainly not valued by my kids. In fact, our cat, Tuco, plays with those things more than my kids. And my kids took all that in stride – no one wailed as I tramped about looking for the next thing I could logically throw in the trash.

I might have settled down, actually, had it not been for Sienna whispering to Kaylee and Ethan, “Why does she always expect us to pick up everything?”

Have you ever seen a mushroom cloud that forms over the site of an explosion? Had you looked at me after she said that, you’d have seen one. It was all I could do not to throw her Cabbage Patch doll through a window. Suffice it to say, more tears were shed after that.

We all returned to the basement where I continued putting things away. While they stood there watching me.

If, indeed, I have buttons (once, when he was two, I told Ethan he was pushing my buttons and he lifted my shirt to see where the buttons were) to push, that is one of them. Wasn’t it quite obvious to these creatures with opposable thumbs that I wanted them to pick up the other stuff? I took their tool bench, their Leap-pads, and their Potato Head and stuffed them in the office.

I hadn’t forgotten about the missing library book – they had even been told that the money to replace it would come out of their own piggie banks. But now, in my mind, a cauldron of thoughts was brewing. Was I making this into too big of an issue? Was I being too harsh on them? Do kids who put things away without being told actually exist? I had started down the path of severe anger, was it too late to back up? I remember feeling at times that my parents had treated me unjustly – specific events where I had done something wrong (on purpose and on accident) and was reamed out by my mom or dad. Heck, I remember that I even lost a Charlie Brown book from the library in my room once. The day we got the bill for the fine was an awful, awful day. Would today be forever branded in their memories? Ethan even told me it was the worst day ever.

Attempting to act more like a 31 year old, I told my kids I was wrong for screaming. I explained that it was fine for me to be angry – after all, they had not obeyed me when I asked them to please put things away when they were finished with them. I said I was sorry for yelling and then we searched for the book in every room of the house, in the van, and then in every room again. I didn’t find it and neither did they. It was after 1:00 by the time we left to do our errands and almost 4:00 by the time we got home and had the groceries put away.

What about now, you ask? My throat hurts from yelling. My heart hurts from knowing I damaged my kids. My back, head, and neck hurt from all the cleaning.

And it occurs to me: I’d rather tear apart my house… and my kids, I guess… than to accept a “black” mark on my record. I’d rather destroy my children than to pay a few dollars to replace a book. It’s come down to the fact that I’m such a perfectionist, I’d put my “reputation” above my own kids’ feelings. Now that’s a crappy feeling.

I have plans for the rest of the day. Simple plans, really.

1. Hug my kids and apologize again.
2. Tell them “Thanks” for helping me look.
3. Read the new books we checked out from the library.