Sandra Tayler's Blog, page 17

Settling In At Home

When I pick up a book in the middle after I’ve not read in a while, there is always an orientation period where I have to read and remember where I was in the story, who is talking, what is the plot driving the characters forward. Today has been like that. I have been re-settling myself back into my house and my parenting roles. I sort through the fridge to see how the contents have changed while I was gone. I run loads of laundry and I run errands. I contact teachers of my two sons, both of whom stayed home from school while I was gone. One by one I pick up the tasks that I put down before I left. They feel lighter than they did before. The rest was good.

I still have tasks to pick up. Most notable are the business tasks. There is accounting and shipping to do tomorrow. Then I have to dive into layout work on Planet Mercenary. Howard and Alan need to see their words in context so that they know the words are working the way they need to. The house could use vacuuming and I really need to finish off the pin sorting project that has been living in our family room for a month. The flower beds need to be weeded and planted so that I will have a fresh crop of flowers for future me to enjoy. There are grapes to pick and turn into juice.

And I want to take time to draft the pair of picture books which showed up in my head and are wanting attention. Then there are the edits on House in the Hollow.

It feels very nice to have my head buzzing with things I want to do instead of just trudging from chore to chore.

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Cruise Lessons

Before this trip I had never been on a cruise. I’d never been interested in them. They seemed the sort of thing that would appeal to other people, not me. And there is truth in that instinct. I would not have enjoyed this cruise as much if it were not full of fascinating writer-people to talk to. There have been times when I ate lunch with a random selection of people from the ship. They were friendly and we had a pleasant conversation, but it was not the sort of energizing conversation that I have with writers or the family members of writers. On the other hand, I suspect my experience is somewhat typical. The cruise offers such an array of activities that there are certain to be some that lie outside the interests of any particular individual.

I expected luxury, and I expected to feel guilty about having that luxury. Saying “I’m going on a cruise” feels privileged and self-indulgent, and it is, but it is also an eye opening educational experience in ways that I did not expect. Before I spent a week on a ship I was never able to distinguish port from starboard. Now that happens instinctively because I need it to find my way from one place to another. Until I stood at night looking over the railing at endless water and felt the deck under my feet moving slightly, I did not understand what was meant when people said they feel “at sea.” There were a couple of days during the cruise where I felt emotionally off balance and disconnected from myself, as if I were lost out in the ocean. Looking down at those waves I comprehended that the ship was the only safety available. If I were to go into the water I would die before I could find any other safety. My creative mind helpfully pictured that for me and I visualized myself swimming, watching the ship get ever further away. Then I stepped away from the rail and went back inside where there were walls between me and the vastness of the ocean. On a map, we’ve never been that far from land, just tooling around between Florida and various islands in the Caribbean, dodging Cuba. Looking out to sea, I realize how big the world is.

On the first day there was a paper in my stateroom introducing the ship captain and crew members. I tossed that paper without really reading it. The captain seemed as irrelevant to me as the various airplane pilots who have taken me places. Here at the end of the week, I see it all differently. I’ve heard the captain’s voice announcing arrivals and departures. I’ve heard him explaining why the ship stopped unexpectedly in the middle of the night (because some drunk guy told his wife he was going to jump off the ship, and she panicked and called the emergency line.) I’ve heard him explain that a medical helicopter would be landing to remove a very sick patient. I’ve seen him across the room as he stopped by one of our social events. Slowly I’ve come to understand that we are all in his hands, that his decisions truly matter for the course of the ship and for my experience on it. I also begin to feel connected to nautical tradition where out on the ocean everything stops or changes to help others in distress. I watch the social atmosphere and tiers of service and interaction on the ship. Then I realize that I am participating in cruise traditions that have their roots hundreds of years ago. I begin to understand in ways that I did not before.

I expected to feel uncomfortable being served and waited on. During the first day I thought that expectation was justified when I saw how much of the serving staff had brown skin and that the majority of the vacationers were white. Then I witnessed how many staff members read my badge and greeted me by name. Then a staff member saw Howard on shore and stopped Howard to make him sit down and wait for a car to take him back to the ship. The staff member realized that Howard was on the front edge of heat exhaustion. I watched native tour guides and heard their accents in context without the slight deference that accented people always display in the US. I hadn’t even realized that the deference was there until I saw Mexican and Jamaican tour guides standing strong and confident in their own countries. They were professionals, intelligent and very good at a very difficult job. All of the serving staff are smart, sharp, highly trained, and function so smoothly that most guests will never notice the multitude of ways that their stay has been made easier. I have been meeting the eyes of staff, learning their names, and giving them as much professional respect as our brief encounters will allow.

I was surprised at how international an experience I’m having on the ship. I knew I would encounter other cultures on the shore, but I find them on the ship as well. Our captain has an eastern European accent. Most of the staff are not from the US. Among the guests I’ve heard a dozen different languages. Many of our retreat attendees have come from outside the US. I love hearing voices with different perspectives. It helps me see my assumptions which had been invisible before.

The ship itself surprises me in small ways. The bathrooms all have thresholds to step over and they latch in ways that remind me I am on a ship, not in a hotel. Most of the time, I am only aware of the motion of the ship as a slight rumble, not really different than the rumble from an air conditioning system in a building. But then there will be a moment where I feel as if I am dizzy. I’m not. It is just that the room is moving slightly around me. Once I identify the motion of the ship, I can adapt for it without trouble. I brought sea sickness remedies, but I have not needed any of them. I enjoy watching the logistics of getting the massive ship into and out of a port. The sunsets at sea have been uniformly gorgeous, which has more to do with the clouds and the sea than the ship, but they surprise me and it is only on the ship that I can see them this way. Behind the ship the wake stays visible all the way to the horizon and gives me thoughts about how we all mark the world by our passing.

We have already scheduled the cruise for next year. I’ll be going again. Next time I’ll be much more familiar with how the ship works. Howard and I will not attempt to go without internet because apparently we keep portions of our cognitive functioning stored in the cloud. I did no writing until I was reconnected to the internet. I have mixed feelings about that. Things that were unexpected obstacles this time will not be problems next time because we’ll know what to expect. I do hope that I’ll learn as much next year as I have this year. I believe I will because it was other people who taught me and I will not run out of things to learn from others. I’ve learned and grown from my conversations with the attendees and the staff on the ship. It will be interesting to see how all my new thoughts settle when I get back home.

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Life is not Convenient

This morning I had a conversation with a friend who was having to decide between a professional event and helping a relative post-surgery. She knew I’d understand because I’m leaving on Saturday and I’ll leave behind three kids who all have school schedules and mental health issues. I’ll leave them in the care of a responsible adult. They will be fine, but it is entirely possible that me being gone will trigger anxiety and panic episodes. And then they’ll have to deal with that. I may come home to emotional clean up. The responsible adult who is coming to watch my kids had to arrange for eldercare for her mother-in-law while she would be gone. None of these things had to land on top of each other. There were lots of other weeks available. But my experience is that my kids are most likely to melt down when I have somewhere I’m supposed to be.

Life is messy. All the things interfere with all the other things. I wish they wouldn’t, but if I put “non essential” things on hold until there is a clear space for them, then I’d never get to them at all. And some of those non essential things are actually pretty critical. It is true that even if it doesn’t rain, you can draw water from the well. Yet if the rain is gone long enough, the aquifer empties and the well goes dry.

So, barring death or dire circumstances, I am going on a trip. On the far side of it we will all have had experiences that are new and maybe we’ll all have grown. Even if there are emotions to untangle when I return, taking the trip is the right choice this time.

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Preparing for a Trip

One week from today I’ll be on a ship en route to the Caribbean. I’ve never been on a cruise ship before, nor have I been to that part of the world. This is both exciting and anxiety inducing. I’ve watched as the final schedule for the writing and workshop portion of this event comes together. It is going to be an amazing trip, but I am definitely going to come home tired. I will have hiked in new places and spent hours working to make sure that the attendees and their families are happy with their trips. I’ll have almost no access to the internet while I’m gone, but I may write up blog posts to put online when I get back. Or I might spend my writing time on fiction. I don’t know what thoughts this trip will unfold in my head.

Between now and my departure I have much work to do in order to get my house, my business, and my kids ready for me to be gone. I’ve arranged to import a responsible adult, but I have instructions to write so the adult will know who needs to go where and when. I also have to pack. Oh, and there is also my son’s Eagle Scout board of review and two Parent Teacher conference days along with all the regular things. It is going to be a busy couple of weeks.

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Battling with Anxiety

“I’m scared of earthquakes.” Gleek launched into this statement almost before she cleared the door to enter my room. Her face was pale, wide-eyed, and a little teary.

“Okay.” I said putting down my book and scooting over so there was room for her next to me on my bed. “What makes you scared about earthquakes today?” I always ask questions when my kids are mired in anxiety. Additional information helps me figure out which flavor of anxiety we’re attempting to manage. It matters because sometimes the anxiety needs to be laughed at and sometimes it needs to be sympathized with.

“I’ve been scared for days. My history teacher says there is a huge fault here in Utah and it is sixty years overdue for an earthquake. And now I’m scared that the earthquake will come and knock down our house and destroy everything.”

So we talked at length about earthquakes. I grew up in California and lived in the Bay Area during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake which knocked down a section of the Bay Bridge and collapsed a long section of the Cypress freeway. That quake had more than a dozen aftershocks over the next two years. I also remember the Livermore quake and its aftershocks. I was able to tell her what an earthquake feels like and that humans are much smarter about building structures that are earthquake safe. I told her about many different earthquakes and how mostly it was just an interesting (if unnerving) experience with little or no damage done. Then we talked about her anxiety disorder and how it makes her more afraid than she needs to be. Yes an earthquake might strike, but beyond some basic emergency preparedness there is nothing we can do about it. We certainly shouldn’t let our daily lives be affected by fear of earthquakes.

Gleek acknowledged all of this and said “Usually when I’m scared of things and the scared won’t go away, I have to talk it out.” I loved hearing the self awareness in her voice. She has grown so much and has developed a solid set of coping strategies. Her fourteen year old strategies are worlds better than the ones she was employing at twelve.

This is a thing I need to remember when Patch responds to stress by becoming uncommunicative instead of engaging with me to figure out where the stress is coming from. When he finally spoke with me (after missing his bus) we were able to determine a specific problem that could be easily fixed. Patch is still acquiring good strategies. I just need to put structural support in place and give him time.

Gleek wound down from her outpouring of earthquake fear. Oddly, the most comforting thing I said was that sometimes I’d only know there was an earthquake because I’d see the lights swaying on the ceiling. Gleek now has plans to hang some things from her bedroom ceiling so she’ll be able to see if there is an an earthquake and get under her desk. On one level she knows that this warning system does little to protect her from the real possibility of an earthquake, but it is a small tool she can use to quell the anxiety. “See the hanging things aren’t moving. We’re fine.”

The other thing I’ll do is go have a word with Gleek’s teacher and let her know that while I understand she has the responsibility to teach about hazards in our area, maybe she could do so in a way that isn’t going to trigger anxiety for the anxiety prone kids.

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Busy Week

As of tomorrow morning half of my children are legally adults. That is just the capstone of a surprisingly eventful week which included a couple of emotional hurdles, school meetings, the news that it is possible for Link to graduate with his class (a thing I’d thought was a lost cause, which now I have to decide whether we should stretch for it. Letting it go had reduced stress), a new diagnosis for one of my kids, planning for an 18th birthday, having to decide to shift a school schedule, a couple of kids missing school because of meltdowns, another kid coming down with a cold, a phone call about a problem with Link’s Eagle Scout paperwork that caused me (needless) anxiety and my 95 year old grandmother being in the hospital again.

At one point during the week I called my sister and said “I need help processing.” She immediately invited me over and we sat for a couple of hours while I spoke all the random things in my head. I’m still processing. Mostly I’ve spent this weekend making sure Link’s birthday went well because I really messed up Kiki’s 18th birthday and Link’s last two birthdays were seriously impacted by Salt Lake Comic Con. We have one more day before we declare the birthday complete, but so far all the things have gone well.

I only have two weeks before I depart for the Out of Excuses Retreat. My big goal between now and then is to put things into a stable configuration so the kids can just do school while I’m gone. There are a lot of To Dos on my list.

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Finding the Right Therapist, or How to Recognize You Have the Wrong One

“It takes a few tries to find the right therapist. Don’t give up.”

I was told variations of this multiple times by multiple people. They were people who had struggled in similar ways, so I believed them. Except that it was repeated often, in almost the same words. Following this seemingly simple instruction turned out to be very difficult that I began to wonder. Is this just a platitude? A thing we say to offer hope in a hopeless situation? Ultimately I’ve come to the conclusion that it is not just a platitude. It is a fact and a necessary process. By the end of this post it will be clear why.

I had no good methodology for finding the “right” therapist. Sometimes I went on recommendations from friends, neighbors, or primary care doctors. Though most of those recommendations were “I’ve heard of this therapist and have a vaguely positive impression attached to the name.” The few times I got an extremely specific recommendation from someone who had worked extensively with that therapist, the therapist was invariably closed to new patients.

I was left with trial and error, which is not a great process for someone who is struggling with feeling hopeless. Unfortunately this mirrors the medication treatment process for mental health as well. So we spent a couple of years trying this therapist and that medicine before switching things around. One kid got better, but not in any way I could relate to the therapy sessions she’d had. Two other kids got much worse. Until lately they’ve been better at least partially because of our experiences with therapy.

I’ve now had direct experience with seven different therapy relationships across four family members. At this point I can tell you far more about how to tell when you have the wrong therapist than I can about finding the right one. It finally occurred to me that this is actually useful information. No one told me what should constitute “not working” and so I stayed in several of the therapy situations much longer than I should have. It is hard to make good judgement calls in the midst of emotional chaos. It is even harder to abandon groundwork that you’ve spent effort, time, and money to establish in order to start over with yet another complete unknown. The thought of having to start over kept me doing “one more session” for weeks. So I’m going to tell you the knowledge I gathered from my experiences. Then I’m going to tell you the stories of how the therapists we had were wrong. From the combination you may be able to glean information to inform your decisions.

Knowledge

My experiences are not universal, some of what I say here may not apply in your situation or may be wrong for you. Listen to your own instincts, which can be hard in the midst of emotional chaos, I know. Listen anyway. Only take the pieces of advice that help you. Discard the rest.

It should only take 4-6 sessions for you to build a rapport with a therapist and start doing emotional work that is beneficial. If you don’t feel these things, move on.

It is not rude to abandon a therapy relationship. You don’t have to apologize or even explain. You can say “this isn’t working” or you can simply cancel your appointment and go elsewhere. Therapy professionals will not be offended or hurt. They understand that some relationships just don’t click.

Your therapist should never make you feel judged. If you feel judged you are not safe to find out what you really think and feel.

If you’re helping someone else with their therapy, how they feel about the therapist matters more than how you feel about the therapist.

It is normal to sometimes resent your therapist, but if that is happening week after week, it is time for a different one. Resentment is a sign that you feel attacked, which means you don’t feel safe with the therapist.

It is easier to have a regularly scheduled appointment than to have as-needed appointments. If you need a non-regular schedule, don’t leave the therapist’s office without scheduling your next appointment.

A sign of a good therapist is that they’re willing to change tactics when one is not working.

One of the reasons it may take several tries to find the right therapist is because you don’t know what you need until you start dealing with one. It is an iterative process.

There are different methodologies in therapy, what helps one person will be ineffective with another. Sometimes the therapist is a mis-match because they’re most comfortable with a methodology that doesn’t work for you. (IE: cognitive behavioral therapy when what you need is PTSD focused therapy or dialectical behavioral therapy.)

The financial cost matters. Sometimes a therapist can be wrong for financial reasons, because high cost can give your brain yet another argument not to go. This stinks, but it is true. Many universities have low-cost clinics where their grad students get to practice being therapists.

The therapist should be respectful of the anxiety and emotional energy that goes into admitting help is needed. One who doesn’t answer phone calls or drops you as a client is the wrong therapist, no matter how good they might be when you actually have an appointment.

Stories

Therapist #1: For Gleek. The therapist was young, a grad student. I thought this would help her build a relationship with Gleek. But all the sessions ended up with me and Gleek together sitting on the couch. The therapist spent most of her time dissecting the parent/child relationship rather than digging in to find out the inner workings of Gleek’s thoughts which Gleek hid behind a shield of chatter. I came away from most of those sessions feeling resentful and judged. It is likely I was projecting my own self-judgements onto the therapist, but she wasn’t sensing or solving that. The therapy relationship ended because the therapist graduated and moved away.

Hindsight: The therapy format was wrong for what we needed. It was set up to treat the parent/child system and ended up giving me lots of parenting advice that I already knew and had already applied. The next time I set up therapy I specified individual therapy.

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Therapist #2: For Gleek. She was a woman in her fifties with a long practice dealing with children. I deliberately sought that out because I wondered if my reaction to the other therapist had been an inexperience problem. This therapist was recommended to me by Gleek’s church leader, specifically because the therapist did art and play therapy. I found the therapist good and easy to talk to, but Gleek became increasingly resistant to going. “I don’t like how nosey she is.” Gleek said. Ultimately Gleek was doing so much better (because of medication and changes at school) that the therapist and I agreed we could stop therapy for a time.



Hindsight: Gleek did not have the right rapport with the therapist, so the therapy was not working as it should. It is possible that the therapist and I could have banded together to push through her resistance. Instead we opted to give her some control. That turned out to be the right call. We did establish that if life gets hard again, back to therapy we’ll go. But we’ll pick a different one.

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Therapist #3: For Link. I chose to go through the comprehensive clinic at BYU in part because it was far less expensive than other options and we were paying out of pocket for everything. I also thought that a young male therapist might have a better chance to connect with Link. This meant a grad student therapist again. By week four the therapist was having trouble getting Link to open up, so he brought me in for a joint session. It went really well. Unfortunately this meant that the therapist always brought me in for all the sessions. It became relationship therapy between Link and I rather than the individual therapy that Link needed. He needed solutions which did not include me. Also I think that speaking with me was more emotionally rewarding for the therapist than speaking to Link. The therapist could poke at my pain and induce me to open up. He was completely unable to do the same for Link. I kept trying to keep him focused on Link, but we ended up talking about me half the time anyway. It took weeks of me being increasingly stressed and resentful of the therapy, and Link feeling the same way, before I recognized the problem and called the clinic to request a different therapist.

Hindsight: This was a similar problem to the one with therapist #1. We had different visions for what the troubles were. I probably could have had a meeting with the therapist and re-calibrated the treatment, but starting over was less work and Link was more likely to cooperate. Continuing to make Link go to a therapist he didn’t like would have damaged my relationship with Link.

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Therapist #4: For Sandra. This was actually the same therapist as #2. She hadn’t worked for Gleek, but I’d enjoyed talking with her. The interactions with Therapist #3 had forced me to see that I was struggling, so I made an appointment. It went well. So did another one. Unfortunately she was by far the most expensive therapist we’d gone to and everything was out of pocket. We finally got onto an insurance plan which covered mental health care (Yay Affordable Care Act!) and she wasn’t listed on the plan. I’d paid her prices for Gleek, but it was harder to justify paying her prices for me. So I’d delay between sessions until I was in crisis. Then I’d call for an appointment…and she’d fail to call back. I’d call again and she texted two days later saying “I have an appointment available in two hours, does that work?” It did not work. Also, I’d requested a phone call to make the appointment, not a text. Ultimately these communication issues were the reason I dropped her. If I gathered the emotional energy necessary to call and set up an appointment, I needed the process to go smoothly rather than stretch out for days adding stress to my life.

Hindsight: She was a good therapist, but her business running skills interfered with my willingness to go to her. My next attempt at therapy for me will be an office with multiple therapists and a full time secretary who handles appointments.

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Therapist #5: For Link. This was the therapist we were assigned after therapist #4 went badly. I’d considered changing away from grad students, but decided to give it one more shot. By this time I’d been told the advice about giving a therapist 4-6 sessions to connect, so that was the plan. Right around session four, the new therapist ran aground in almost exactly the same way as the prior one had. Link wasn’t opening up. He’d give answers, but they were mostly shrugs or “I don’t know.” This therapist met with me separate from Link and hammered out a new plan. He started playing games with Link. The whole goal was to connect first and then gradually use that connection to teach Link how to connect without games. Then they could get at emotional issues. It was a brilliant plan. I approved. I think it would have worked. Unfortunately about a month later the therapist made a personal decision that took him out of the grad school program. He worked to hand us off to another therapist, and was as conscientious as he could be, but it was still a big blow to Link and to me.

Hindsight: Not much useful to offer here, except that this process can be hard in unexpected ways.

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Therapist #6: For Link. This was the therapist that therapist #5 handed us over to. They had this nice transitional plan where the new therapist would attend sessions with Link and the prior therapist. She was a young and pretty grad student. Link met with her twice and told me that he wasn’t comfortable with her. I wasn’t surprised. There had been a young pretty female math teacher at school that Link had refused to go to for help. Talking to people is hard for Link. Talking to girls is even harder. I called off the appointments and put Link on a therapeutic hiatus while some other things settled down in our lives.

Hindsight: Link needed an older brother/ role model and a young female therapist was not going to work in the same way. An older, motherly or grandmotherly woman would probably be fine. Any future therapist selections for him will keep this in mind. I’m also likely to try a therapist with a different approach, such as dialectical behavioral therapy instead of cognitive behavioral therapy.

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Therapist #7: For Patch. I think we began seeing this therapist before Link’s good therapist quit, but I’ve put her last on the list because she’s the only one whom we’re still seeing. She’s a grad student at the same clinic as Link’s therapy. She and Patch hit it off right away. It helped a lot that I recommended that games be part of the therapy. (Having learned from Link’s experience that this can foster connection.) I can tell the therapy is working because Patch doesn’t resist going. Often he is excited or happy to go. Also the therapist usually brings me in for the last few minutes to let me know what they talked through and what would be a good focus for the week ahead. I know that they really are beginning to dig down in and untangle some of the emotional knots that Patch has been carrying around.

Hindsight: This is how you know when therapy is working, life feels easier. It is subtly easier so that you may not even be sure if it being easier is because of the therapy.

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I don’t have many concluding thoughts, except to say that writing up this post helped me to see why it is sometimes necessary to try multiple therapists before settling. Each therapy relationship helps you learn more about what you need and want in a therapy relationship. It is not a failure to need to ditch one therapist and try out another one, it is a refining process. I wish I’d known that when I first started, it would have made the process easier.

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Small Surprises in Growing Up

It is always the little things that surprise me as my kids are growing up. Or maybe they are big things, but the key is the surprise. In stories these are the surprising yet inevitable plot moments where the audience first gasps and then says “of course, how could it be any other way?” This time it was an email.

“Link needs to register for selective services before his eighteenth birthday.”

I blinked at the email, in a sort of shocked pause. My boy is too young to have to register for the draft. Except he isn’t. Not anymore. It is only about two weeks until he is a legal adult and many of the rules change. One of them is filling out a form that registers him as a young male eligible for the draft should our country have a major military conflict and need more soldiers than it currently has enlisted.

No one has been conscripted or drafted into the United States Military since 1973, the year I was born. There hasn’t been a draft in my lifetime. The odds that my son will be called upon to fight my country’s battles are negligible. Our country has enough strong and good volunteers who fill those roles. But staring at that email, I had a moment of fear. For a moment war loomed and I felt connected to generations of mothers before me who sent off their sons, and to mothers now, who still do because their sons and daughters volunteer. My son is not a warrior. He doesn’t even like to play violent or bloody video games. And if he struggled and nearly broke when faced with the challenges of high school, I shudder to think what boot camp would do to him. I spent a long moment picturing what going to battle could do to him physically and mentally.

After a moment, the shadow of fear passed. I filled out the form to register him. This is one of the responsibilities of being a citizen, along with jury duty, and paying taxes. Yet when I hope and pray for peace in the world, there is just a slight bit more fervor in my prayers. I know that my family and I are very fortunate in the peaceful existence we’ve lived. It is good for me to face the fact that not everyone gets to choose a peaceful life.

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Watching Shooting Stars

It was the final day of the annual Perseid meteor shower. If I’d wanted the full display I should have gone out at 1am that morning. Instead I found myself laying on my back staring at the sky while the clock ticked over into the next day. Three of my kids and I were spending the night at a cabin in a state park. We were far away from city lights. The night was clear. All we needed was for the Perseids to cooperate and trail a few lingering meteors across the sky.

I lay there with my children, waiting. School would start for them in only a few days. I didn’t know how that would go. We were waiting for that too. Light streaked across the sky and I gasped, just a small, involuntary intake of breath at the sudden appearance and disappearance of light. It had been years since I’d seen a shooting star. I sent a quick prayer after it, almost like a wish.

Please let us grow this year instead of shrink. Please let us have happiness instead of hurt. Please, I don’t know what we need for this year, please help us figure it out.

More lights dashed across the sky. Some faint. Some bright. There weren’t many. Nothing like the display that people had described from the night before. I didn’t wish on them all, but each of them stole my breath for just a moment.

I wasn’t alone with the stars. My children lay with me, sometimes silent, sometimes cracking jokes with their cousins, always exclaiming out loud when lights streaked across the sky. I was glad to have them there with me, watching the lights and the darkness.

Shooting stars did not bring us any answers, just a beautiful moment to treasure.

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Empty Hours

I wandered through the house and it was strange and quiet. All four of my kids were off at their schools. Howard away at a convention. I paused to think when I last had the house to myself for five hours in a row. I don’t know when it was. Probably before Howard started working from home instead of trekking to Dragon’s Keep to do his drawing. That was eighteen months ago. Last December was when Link started being at home during school hours and my days were regularly interrupted by urgent meetings, surprise school pick ups, emotional crises, and home schooling. This morning they all left cheerfully. And they came home calmly. In between I had hours. I just wandered around in those hours rather than settling to a focused task. Come Monday I’ll try to build a work schedule around having those hours. It is time to proceed as if all will be well.

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