With basketball and swim seasons quickly approaching, and the surety of cozy dinners home together looking like a distant memory, I’ve been wanting to connect with my kids.  I know I’m not alone in feeling like there are days we barely pass each other in the kitchen for a high five, let alone a sit-down conversation about things that matter.

So. Early in the week, I invited each of my children to choose something (s)he and I could do alone together.  I chose cards for each of them, each one unique, with an individualized message about how much I treasure them in my life.  I left the cards on their pillows for when they would climb into bed, tired from the day, and have something to ponder and then look forward to.

Since Garrett, now 16, does his homework in his bedroom, he found his card early in the evening instead.  He came down the stairs, where I was reading in my comfy, plush brown chair. Not even half way down, he declared “I haven’t decided what I want to do!  Maybe the mall!  Maybe a movie! What about going out to dinner?!”  I told him he didn’t have to tell me right away, that he could think it over.  “Sweet!” he said, and bounded back up,

Natalie, 10, found hers at bedtime and shyly came in to my room where I was snuggled up, again reading.  She said nothing, but held the card up for me to see.  “Have you decided what you’d like to do?” I asked her.  “I’d like to go to a craft store,” she responded, “and get something crafty to do together.”  When I said we could do that she hugged me tight.

Luke ,14, said nothing to me until I asked him if he’d found his envelope — the following evening.  I asked him if he’d had a chance to think about my card.  “Yes,” he answered, “but I can’t decide.  What would you like to do?”  Cue melting heart.

And this little scene here, described minimally and by candlelight, if you will, captures so perfectly my three offspring.  It’s no wonder I miss them so when they’re moving so fast I can hardly keep up.  But I take comfort in knowing that they are who they are, and I know who they are, and no amount of busy-ness will change either of those things.

I’m up for a bit of a fright this time of year, maybe a ghost or two hanging in a doorway or a witch and her broomstick flying in a tree. I even kind of like those fake headstones people decorate their lawns with.  I can kind of geek out on Halloween.

I’m not one iota up for the kind of health scare my family had with my mother last week.  For the record, I’m not up for this no matter what time of year it is.  I’m not up for it no matter what year it is.  I will never, ever be up for it.  My mother is my one and only mother – as mothers are – and nope, I will never be ‘prepared’, the end.

She’s okay, let’s start there.  She’s fine.  In fact, let’s end there, too.  My mother had a health scare, and she is going to be just fine.  I didn’t know if I wanted to blog at all about her experience, which is why I haven’t until now, and why I’m not providing details, because it seems voyeuristic or vicarious or something.  I’m writing about it now not because I’m fishing for – anything, really – because if I needed more help or support than I’ve received already, believe me I’d ask for it.

I’m writing about it now because of how grateful I am for it.  For the way things are turning out.

In the past two days I have been told of two different situations in which people in my community have lost loved ones.  I have cried over these losses like I cried when I wasn’t sure whether I’d lost my mother last Thursday.  The drive from Camden to Belfast’s hospital was 2,741 miles long, all of them blurry through tears.

I didn’t know either of the people who died this weekend, but I know some people who loved and cherished them.  And I grieve for them, here in the season of dying and loss, of cold and dark.  I cry because there are people anywhere, and everywhere, who are now living without people they can’t live without.  This is happening.  And it will happen to me, someday, at some point, again.

I am just grateful and painfully aware of my own happenstance.  Which is all it is.  

For semester 3 at Stonecoast I get the opportunity to study/explore, in depth, a craft concept, through the brilliant work of other people, and also to experiment with in my own writing.  I have chosen to study the use of voice and humor to write about the mundane in an intriguing way (how to keep the reader’s pages turning…)

I’m going to TAG all Stonecoast work in “Beauty in the Dishsoap” – a new category you’ll notice way over there on the right side of the blog homepage.

Feedback during this semester would be of crucial value to me.  If you’re up for it, readers, please let the words fly.  Let me know what works and what absolutely does not.  You can comment in the box labeled “say what you need to say” on the blog.  Or you can just respond on Facebook.  If those don’t work, or you want a more private way of providing feedback, shoot me a message in any way you prefer.

Thanks, ya’ll.