{by Mary Murdoch of Wild Tigers Have I Known}

(photo credit)

In order to accumulate a soul, you have to suffer.

As if, once enough suffering has tumbled down upon you,
building up like a mountainside,
your second life will begin.

Like Athena you will sprout from Zeus’ head and appear in a ball of light, naked and red.

Love is what brings all the suffering.
Love is watching everyone you love leave, die, perish- each person wilting slowly.
Like day old geraniums in a Mason jar that sat on the kitchen counter when I was eight years old.
They dried and mummified like King Tut wrapped in cheesecloth.
Carelessly, I knocked over the glass jar and at once, everything fell to the ground.

Two weeks later my dog died, and I was convinced the falling jar was an omen.
A sign from the other side that death was creeping over into the living’s territory in a dense fog
(like there are chalk outlines dividing space between life and death, war zones, agreed upon plots of land.)

(by Jen Lee)

It’s okay to be quiet.
You don’t need to give the full report just yet, you may not need to give it at all. Reporting requires understanding, and sometimes you just need to follow the path and see where it leads before you know where you are.

It’s okay to be quiet.
You can declare your hope in a loaf of bread you bake by hand, you can put unnecessary things on the stoop as an act of faith in future provision. You can let the apple pie you’re making invite company, and the space you’re preparing for friends invite joy.

It’s okay to be quiet.
You can say all you really need to say with one look, with one touch. You can express your gratitude for his love in the way you smile when you see him come into the room. You can let them know how they melt your heart in the tenderness of your kiss on their foreheads.

The words are the last thing to arrive, but the love is here all along.

**

Jen Lee inspires me to live.
Read her perfect life words here.

{by Mollie Green of Fresh Milk Delivered Daily}

bright, white in the sky, the moon bold faced and shining.
far away, a distance i only know in numbers, but clear,
valleys and summits in sharp gleaming gray inside the orb light of it.

here, the white bright moon, open and full overhead.
here, a night that breathes like curtains in open windows, in, out again.
here, a hope of spring in the corners of it, hope riding wings of mercy free, new.

(by Stacey of Is There Any Mommy Out There?)

photo credit

I expect it to be like a cloud. That moment of walking in the door.
A gold-tinged cloud scented orange with an undertone of cinnamon. It’s more like hitting a wall of thin arms and loud reedy voices, their smiles bright, their garbled tales spilled at my feet like slippery fish from a basket. I am surrounded by noise where I anticipated hugs set to the flicker of a silent movie.

The baby is up. Quiet time is over. It’s time for snack. They played in a tent. Do I want a cookie? That one is hopeful. They made cookies with Daddy. Might they perhaps, if I wanted one, have a cookie too?

My brain is frozen, shocked and sluggish, like the marble-eyed deer we nearly hit three nights ago on our wild escape through Palouse hill country into the night. Why oh why does it smell like fish?

It is one of those things they don’t tell you about motherhood. This matter of going away and coming back again. Or maybe, to be fair, it is one of those things that can not be taught. Like child birth and that instinct that tells you this fever is serious and not like all the others, this can not be explained before it is experienced.

It’s not that you miss them. Or maybe that’s just me – I might be odd in that respect, though I doubt that I am alone. Three years into sharing my thoughts on mothering this way, I believe firmly that I am never alone. There is always someone out there searching for this nugget, this truth, this strange fossil of a thing that they find buried in themselves and that they are glad to see someone else hold up to the light and turn around, curious. Will you look at this? Isn’t that odd? Look at how the shell turns back on itself. A new creature entirely.

{by Emily of Chatting at the Sky}

Piano was my major until my sophomore year of college. That was when I quit. Required practice and theory classes and hours upon hours in fluorescent lit rooms with Chopin and Czerny did not bring out the art in me, it nearly made it die. I quit simply because I wanted to love it again. It’s the same reason why I will probably never be a real professional photographer. The art of it doesn’t outweigh the responsibility enough, and so I continue to learn at my own pace and in my own way. I take pictures because it helps me see. And that is all.

For a long time, writing was private for me. Over time and through this blog, writing has become something different. Of all the art there is in the world, writing is the art that brings the most satisfaction as well as the most fear. I can avoid the piano for months at a time. But if I don’t write, there is a distinct possibility I might not exist. I know that isn’t actually true, but that is how it feels.

I write for pleasure, for remembering, for learning, for listening, and for money. I can write in the early morning hours as well as late at night. I squeeze it in ten minutes before it’s time to get the kids and quick while the water boils. Unlike piano or photography, the art of writing outweighs the pressure and expectations. For some people, the art of making music is worth the fluorescent lights with Chopin. For me, the art of writing is worth the fear, the risk, and the isolation.

Because I believe I’ve found the art that is also my worship, it is important to me to use it. To practice it. And to share it. When I played piano, it was always really difficult for me to play for people. I was nervous, embarrassed, and tried to avoid it at all costs. If I would have decided that was the art I wanted to pursue, I think I would have gotten better at sharing it. I would argue that unshared art is still art, but it feels more like a hobby.

(by Talon)

photo credit

Never pick the berries the birds don’t touch
you told me long ago
and I remembered your words
when I saw the red berries
glistening in the snow
and I didn’t touch them
because the birds ignored them
leaving the fruit to the muse of winter

Never make a wish on a waning gibbous
you told me long ago
for you said the wish became magic
under a waxing crescent
the new would herald beginnings
with endings tucked inside
and when I saw the moon near full
I stilled my secret

{by Heather Westberg King}

photo source

He has asked so many questions that don’t have answers and I’m just so tired. I ask him to help his brother. I say, “He’s going to get hurt, can you help him?” He asks, “Why will he get hurt?” I answer through gritted teeth, “He just will! Just help him!” Then he sighs and his big blue eyes look sad and I wish I could find the strength for more patience and less surprising anger.

When I walk into my room to get dressed, I pass the crumpled bed and want to get in it. I want to curl up on my side and cry. I’m not sure why, but I want to do it. I start to walk that way and then I see her, the me in my mind’s eye, on her side in the bed where I am not. She looks like she’s repeating history. She is carrying this disease and she thinks she isn’t and then sometimes she thinks she is this disease. She is me and I am her and she is them and she is not.

She is so afraid that she’s given it to them.

I know that if I were to walk in and find her curled there, I’d think she should get up. I’d think she should shake it off. It’s not her fault she’s there, but she needs to get up, I’d say. Then I’d wonder if some of it is her fault, because I know memories of ridiculous choices can flood in and bring with them the funk, curling her up.

So I get dressed. I wash my face of yesterday’s make-up and I put one foot in front of the other to make sure that I’m not her or them or her past. I fight it because I know that when I do, it gets a little better.

I fake it sometimes, but strangely, most of the time I’m truly reveling in the buried joy. The miraculous happiness that comes through the eyes of my boys. We make a hide-out in a closet and they are thrilled with their flashlights in the dark. I well up with joy because they are who they are and I believe we can change this. Even if it doesn’t stop, it can be lighter, it can get better. Even if they feel it, they can learn that it doesn’t define them. I will tell them. They can learn from the truths we speak over them…

{by Maggie May Ethridge of Flux Capacitor}

I grew up poor, at times literally poverty stricken- collapsed into tears over our lack of money for basic necessities, food, electricity, housing; we spent one year living, the four of us, in one room of a mousy beach hotel, and another in the four bedroom home of our best friends, which already housed their five family members, two dogs, birds and a few cats. My parents slept on the foldout couch in the living room. After that long, crowded year my mother moved my sister and I back to our birthplace in Jackson, Mississippi while my father stayed working in San Diego.

Lura and I took turns sleeping in bed with Mom, while the one out slept on the cot placed horizontally at the end of the bed. This was my 4th grade year: the year I read Pet Cemetery, made friends with Julia, whose father had died of cancer the year before, the year I moved into a home at the end of a cul-de-sac where my sister and I were the only white girls on the block. We were the only white girls for miles of blocks.

{by Sarah Bessy of Emerging Mummy}

I watched him park his Dad’s Impala, open the door and heave a big gulp of courage before running around the car to open the door for the girl inside. She stepped out, runners first, clad in shorts despite the cool night air and an oversized Hyacks sweatshirt. She was tiny compared to his lanky frame. They were awkward and expectant. Breathless and nervous. I saw them both sneak a glance around, making sure that no adults or witnesses were around. They seemed comfortable with me just sitting at the red light across the street. Because he shyly snaked his arms around her waist, she reached up to lock her hands behind his neck and pull his mouth down to hers. They kissed, sweetly, under the street lamps on 8th Ave for just a few seconds. The light turned green.

I drove the rest of the way home with the window down.
The night was dark and cool but perfumed with the scent of the cherry tree blossoms.

I drove unseeing. I was transported, watching and remembering, holding a memory like a jewel in my hand, turning it over and over. April nights in Tulsa more than ten years ago. Brian and I, slow dancing on the side of the road to an AM radio from his borrowed Chevy Blazer. Him wearing jeans and basketball shoes with a Nebraska Huskers t-shirt, me in my barely-dress-code skirt and flip flops, red hair to my waist and cherry lip gloss carefully applied. Surrounded by warm darkness with the stars like a cathedral above us, faint noises of cars driving past on a nearby road, our feet shuffling, our mouths tasting of coffee from Java Dave’s. Bodies pressed tightly together, wringing love from every minute before curfew.

And then the kisses.

{by Erika Wagner-Martin}

For so, so long it felt like we would never get here.

We smiled show smiles through home visit after home visit by social worker after social worker.
We steeled ourselves as we bundled them up for trips to the visitation center far too far away.
We held our breath, our hearts the frontline cavalry from the back row of the courtroom
anytime we attended a hearing.

I have knocked on wood — and by wood, I mean anything comprised of matter — thousands of times,
gasping for air as I’ve constricted and believed and constricted and believed our dream
of being a forever family with these precious, precious girls.

The beginning of this process is full of fear for people like me.
You’ll never get a newborn, they tell you. You want two together?
They will be damaged and you will spend a lifetime trying to save them
and love alone cannot save anyone, they say.