Trying to do Schoolwork while the kids are on school holiday...

..is like trying to clean your teeth with a frog... or something! Back to inter-spousal juggling to try and fit in at least an hour or two of writing here and there, but I don't think it's going to work in the long run...Hard to read at night, too, when the kids are still bouncing off the walls at 10pm. But it's making me amazingly phlegmatic.

Oh, Proust...

You are stealing my heart...how you make me long to return to the delicious boredom of childhood!

Home Again: an appreciation

Back from Vermont. So good to see the family and sleep in my bed. Lovely to just swap roles and be given the opportunity not to think too much. It's been a whirlwind residency -- so much to listen to and think about, and many moments of inspiration and epiphany. Really getting to know a good handful of friends. On my last day, a wonderful bike ride through the Vermont hills, beauty all around. Hard t believe next time I go, it will all be covered in snow.

Strangest thing, when I woke up after getting home late Sunday night, my four-year-old daughter came in and started talking, and seemed as if she'd aged by months -- a great leap in verbal and physical, and it seemed psychic maturity -- perhaps because I went away and she had to adjust? Amazing. Thrilling. I get, in this way, to see my children from a distance, without having to go too far away for too long. I wonder if they perceive a change in me?

With Who Else Would I Give Up My Sweet Hours?

Glorious cool, cool rain today.

Sitting talking with my 'class' -- my writing buddies, missing my children so much with a pain that actually does seem to come from the heart, I look around and think, 'These are some of the only people in the world for whom I would give up my sweet hours.' We all are learning from this separation, from the anxieties and putting down of the anxieties, from the way we stretch our wings when we are without the support of the mother, or the lover or the child...

Their little voices on the phone, their bodies whose heat and worries I can't feel...thank goodness it is only ten days. And then we will all be changed.

Poetry, Stories, Workshop, Karaoke

A pretty full day. Still feeling kind of tenuously linked to myself here. Longing for true entry...and wishing it were cooler at home so my family could play outside at least.

My heart is like a singing bird...

... but her song's a little weary today. Feel a bit like I've flown to the moon, though the moon creatures are beginning to show themselves and populate this strange landscape. I got books from the library and carried them back to my room like friends. There was mist over Mt Anthony this morning as the rain abated -- a bath for the soul.

I keep thinking of my children in the 100 degree heat and their sun hats, and wanting to protect them. It already feels like I've been away from them for a lifetime. When they go off to college or off on their own lives, I must remember you do not just forget your past, the place and people you came from, but carry them with you, a pile of beloved books under your arm, a choir of lovely voices in the heart.

Walking back from a faculty Q and A through the rain-soaked meadow tonight, these words accompany me:
Smell of sweet wet grass
and clover and daisy and buttercup,
Smell of sweet wet grass
and clover and daisy and buttercup,
Smell of sweet wet grass
and clover and daisy and buttercup...

The music of a summer evening in Vermont. Feels like home!

I am Here

Tired and discombobulated; more anxious than excited this time around. Why do I feel so different?

When I left this morning, my son and daughter both said, "I don't want you to go," because this time, I realize, they remember what that feels like. I want to protect them and cannot do it from here...