Just Write

I've been trying to pull together a post all day. In between the Christmas Take-Down, the children squabbles, the cleaning, the cooking and trying to find time to play, laugh and train. Every time there's a pause in the motion and commotion, my brain starts chugging along...

"Jamie is such a passionate child. In the moment of submission to discipline, he will throw himself into my arms with tempestuous wails, bury his little face deep into my neck and cling to me, fingers clutching my shirt in a desperate grip, writhing in the agonies of thwarted will..."

But before I can make it to the laptop, something breaks, or falls over, or spills, or someone yells, or trespasses, or cries... And the idea must be shelved in the library of my memory, perhaps at some point brought out, dusted off and wrestled into a full-length post...

"Fire is so much more than warmth. The gods gave fire to man for protection and safety, light, a sense of belonging and peace, romance and familial love. Home and Hearth. Men have been fighting for it, living for it, longing for it for millennium. A fireplace is worth the space and trouble. Even in Florida."

Crash, splash, yell..........file it away again....


For so much of my life I've defined my self by my memories, my past, my family. And now suddenly I find all that stripped away and I've landed here in a foreign land far away from all that has defined me for so long. I have of necessity had scramble to find ways to define myself by other things. And I've not yet refined that process, haven't yet figured out the New Me. Who is this Florida Resident? I don't know her well yet...


This is why I love the Just Write meme. It gives me a place to file away these fragments where they won't fade away with memories, their place taken by more pressing daily matters. Heather has given busy moms like me a place to lay down the remaining pieces of our creativity for the moment in a safe place, to pick them up again, someday, hopefully, when all the noise has ceased and the uneasy peace of an empty house shadows the corners of our days.