Bits and Pieces

• I am enjoying reading Wendell Berry's Jayber Crow - in the bathroom, 10 (or 2 or 3) minutes at a time. (If you're a mom, you understand this is probably the most effective way to get it done.)
  
• Shep has me convinced the world is ending soon. He reads the news; I don't, because I know I'll be filled in on whatever I need to know. Shep fills me in on the Middle East.
  
• Apparently, the bread-baking frenzy is a documented stage of female life. I'm in it. There is something about the dough; it feels like a piece of flesh, and you're molding it. Last Friday, Grace was standing beside me while I formed dough into loaves, and after awhile with a stirred expression, she said, "I love watching you do that." (I think she gets it.)
• I am practicing a new spiritual discipline called sleep. For me, going to bed at 10pm says, "God made me to need 8 hours of sleep. Whatever I can't get done in 16 hours doesn't need to be done today." (I am conflicted about it; I'll have to let you know how it goes.)
  
• I played cards with my mom tonight. We play a kind of speed group solitaire called Duker. The rest of the family can't talk and play at the same time, but my mom and I play best during a good conversation. We played til the baby was beside himself, then I came home.
• I'm drowning in dirty dishes. Shep promised he'd do them when he gets home, so I'm sitting on the couch waiting for him.

I can't make all this into one unified thought today, (probably because I need to go practice my new spiritual discipline.) But that's my life - bits and pieces whirling around an ever-constant nucleus of caring for little children, a center that is itself full of motion. When I close my eyes at night, I still feel it, like after a day at the ocean; instead of waves, I feel little arms, see little eyes, hear little voices, saying, "Mommy? Mommy! Mommy. Mommy,..."