balance (again)

Bea, who is supposed to be sleeping soundly, yells upstairs from her crib. I am trying to turn her off so I may enjoy the sunshine filling the room, the shadows crisscrossing across the rug. A rumor of warmer weather is cheering us a bit out of our February blues--we hear about 60 degrees and sun on Thursday. I'm hoping to take children up to our friend Mike's farm, to see his newborn kids (goat kids, that is). And I feel like Frog, from Arnold Lobel's story, who keeps walking around corners, trying to find spring. One happy day, he rounds the corner of his house and finds his parents out in the garden, planting seeds. The sun warms his amphibian neck and he announces that he's found spring after all. Soon Martin will be thinking about ordering pea seeds, and we'll be tucking away hats and boots and all the bulk, and the weary world will glow again.

I spoke to my mother this morning, and during the course of our conversation, she asked me about my writing. "I'm sort of on hiatus right now," I said, "But I feel happy." "Hiatus" means blogging, my weekly column, and an essay or story every few months. The great novel will have to wait.

Next year, Bea will attend preschool two mornings a week (I just found out I will teach a class those two mornings), Elspeth will be in kindergarten full time, and Merry will be in (gasp) fourth grade. I want to enjoy this last spring with children as much as I can, and then move contentedly on to a new stage in our lives together. Though I've struggled with great frustration and morose days, I've never regretted choosing to stop teaching to be available to the children, and as every parent predicted, the time has flown by. I've managed to tuck in quite a bit of writing despite the girls, or maybe because of them. All the things I love dearly feed each other, and all those things in balance ring with more happiness than I deserve. Everything slips into harmony just often enough to let me hear and appreciate the music of my existence, our own family and community. Most of the time, "bungling" and "muddling" are more appropriate words, but the flashes of rightness convince me that we are where we are supposed to be. And that is a good feeling.

Bea's continued screaming? Not producing good feelings at this juncture. An essential to finding balance: being able to ignore noise. I'm working on that.