Days 61-64-- I Give Myself a Break

Spring break. We drive to Edisto Beach, where we camp beside the ocean and sit watching the children delight in the wonders of nature and their first camping trip. They sleep like angels while we grown-ups freeze at night in the tent, and I dream of a tsunami swallowing us up, then wake to find such an earthquake-induced disaster has struck on the other side of the world in Japan. Co-incidence or not, I am in touch, I think, with the world, and this is the life of the writer-mother, its great privilege and burden, too: to be alive to everything, each detail, the rushing in and sucking out of each wave, the shells and fossils each tide leaves behind.

And should I never publish another word, it doesn't matter because my children are already both poets. "There is no remote to control nature," sings my six year-old on the car journey, looking at me through the eyes of pure, simple adoration a son has for his mother, and my daughter delights us all with the sweet crazy wisdoms that come out of her lovely, rosebud mouth. I cannot get enough of kissing them.

So easy to be in love when you sleep in the same small space as your family, and feel their every living breath and their first joyful utterances on waking. Easy even to love the alien place that, in spite of my resistance, holds out its Spanish moss covered arms to me and says, 'I'm not so bad, see -- I have pelicans and dolphins, I have angel-wing clouds and moon snail shells and angels' toenails and whelks that look as if they've been imagined by mermaids, carved by ocean gods.

When we get home, I'm hoping there'll be a packet of comments back from my teacher on my last submission, but it's not here yet. Funny, it's like waiting for love letters, almost -- a reminder that love is a far-reaching thing, and something that is in part about ourselves, and that that's okay -- it's alright to love what we create, in fact, it's essential.

Daylight savings and the children are asleep already as I write this, back in their own beds. And this break from my work has let the thoughts in my head and heart settle into a deeper place, and create, I hope, a more resonant music. Maybe when I sit down to write tomorrow, I will be on fire, or maybe nothing will come. How wonderful to feel, truly, that either outcome is a good one.