follow the signs

When my son was a year old, he would pull books off the floor-to-ceiling bookshelf and make pretty patterns with them on the floor. I don't know how it happened in my exhaustion-blurred state, but my instinct was to register what another mother might name "mess" as "cosmic sign." I considered these book spills the equivalent of throwing coins to get an I Ching reading. The pattern was my trail of crumbs back to my self–my son my cosmic guide. I'd read the books that landed closest to me. And they were always just the right books for that moment in time.

I was reminded of this last night when the two of us–my son and I–were several hours into being awake through the night for the fourth night in a row. We had moved through the agonies of his sore bottom, his desire to eat things he could not digest, his achey fever keeping him awake into the no-name space that people share when there is nothing left to do but wait. He could not decide which side of my bed was more comfortable, so he traveled over me like a rolling pin from one side to the other. There was an intermission of sorts, and then my son appeared at my bedside with a present for Mommy (he loves giving me presents): a pile of magnets and a book.

Eventually, we got a banana in him, a fresh pull-up on him, and at about 5:30 a.m. my son settled back into his own bed to sleep. I finished the client video scrip from behind the fog of the body that seemed no longer to belong to me and limped sadly through the rest of my day. Four days deep into this minor illness and I was at my Calgon-Take-Me-Away ground zero. The gravity of parenting alone sang its rich, minor chord through me.

At the day's end, I came up to bed early and found the pile of magnets and the book my son had gifted me that early morning. I stood up straight as I took in the cover in my hands: A Cup of Comfort for Single Mothers. This is the book my three year old son chose for me on one of the hardest nights of single motherhood that I've had yet.

Now, I confess that if he'd given me a book on how to make a worm compost bin or one about baby yoga, I'd likely have found some meaningful symbolism in those, too; it is my habit to train circumstance to a kind of mystical logic. And, I suppose that this is what I'm recommending that you try–or continue.

Because if you approach your writing life like a treasure hunt, all information and circumstance that presents itself is a clue, a stone on your path. It's all important, meaningful, instructive. When your dog drags the garbage bag through the house, your child magic-markers her wall, the neighbor switches on the electric guitar when you've put head to pillow: it could be a disaster, or it could be a Rorschach test revealing to you who you are in this moment. This could be an opportunity to let the mystery of life penetrate you in all its edgy discomfort.

What happened this week that was unexpected or particularly interesting to you? If you were to consider it a sign, what might it be advising you to do? How can you use it to inform your writing life?

When my son pulled the book Sabbath off the shelf, I made a commitment to my family and myself to hold Saturday as our shared sabbath. When I nearly knocked myself out in the garage as my brother and I were digging around in the bikes, I found myself on the floor with a pile of toddler toys on top of me. Was this The Universe playing a knock-knock joke where the punch line was my lack of playfulness? I don't know; but it's fun to guess.

What if you were to dedicate a day to living and writing symbolically?  I propose that you notice what the signs are saying about your writing life, and accept the gifts you are given.

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