DAYS I AM PROUD OF
(and a few photos from our Friday afternoon)

"So I am proud only of those days that pass in
undivided tenderness,
when you sit drawing, or making books, stapled,
with messages to the world.
Or coloring a man with fire coming out of his hair.
Or we sit at a table, with small tea carefully poured;
So we pass our time together calm and delighted."

from the poem "For My Son, Noah, Ten Years Old" by Robert Bly

I am proud of the days where I wake earlier than the sun and the sky is already staining with light and and wine and I brew my tea with my eyes half-shut and the birds are so wide awake and bold--stealing seed--they think they're stealing, from the little house we've given to them for feeding.

I am proud of the days when I notice them as I settle in with my steaming mug and my journal--when I decide my life is worthy enough to be written down--just for me, just because--in complete unselfish self-love.

I am proud of the days when the computer gathers dust and I gather words on soft paper pages--coiling line after line. I fall in love with my own handwriting--no cares for the meanings of this. I am proud of the days when I pause just outside their sleeping doors and whisper, "Thank You," before I wake them for school--then manage to hold that gratitude--just for their existence--while I pour the cereal and the milk, while I help them into socks and shoes, brush their hair, kiss their soft faces goodbye as they leave. I am proud of the days when their kisses back are reverent prayers--when I notice the fringe of lashes over blue-blue eyes, the perfect bow lips, the subtle shifting of their growing bodies.


















I am proud of the days where my love is a lump in my throat for them. When I settle back into the kitchen once they're safely bundled off to their lives--the humming fridge, ticking clock, and birds calling through the delicate window panes keeping time for me.

I am proud of the days when I feel gratitude--just for sitting there, just for enjoying my own company. I am proud of the days when I push my pen because I was born to do it...when my fear burns off beneath the veil of morning and I know my writing there, these words no one else may ever see, this humble act is the most important thing for me to do right then. It is why I came to life beneath a ripe July moon, why I have survived, why I have eyes and a voice and a cheap black pen.

I am proud of the days when I put the notebooks aside, fuller--richer--for me having been there and fall seamlessly back into the busy tides of my life again...when their voices filling the house and spilling back out over dinner plates is the response the birds were waiting for. I am proud of the days when the man who loves me takes my hand as he dreams--just to make sure I am still there--and I know that being there, a witness to the darkness, is real and is love and is the gift he gives to me. When I remember that I created three people who talk in their sleep without speaking--every exhaled breath a hosanna I sing through them, will always sing through them...on the days I am most proud of.