“Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.” ~ Confucius 
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A few weeks ago, my girl and I were laying side-by-side, resting from an intense game. The sun was shining on our faces, but the air was cool. A perfect late summer day, until…
Until the moment my 11-year-old rolled over squinted her eyes at me and said, “Mom, you have a lot of grey hair.” And then as her youthful eyes slid to my face, “And you look old.”
I forced out a laugh because I know she’s seeing things that have been there for a long, long, long time. But it still made me cringe.
Then my girl smiled a genuine grin, “You’re so pretty.” Wait, what?! Old is pretty?
From the moment my daughter was born, she was most content when not inside. As a baby, the best way to calm her colicky crying was to snuggle her in a bouncy seat under the maple tree or, when it got cold, take her for a ride in a sled.
Until now. A few days ago, my girl asked me to go take pictures with her. The little dude was at soccer practice and the field is hemmed in with fields and trees—full of natural beauty, decay, and life all mixed together for us to explore. 
Almost exactly a year ago, I attended a writer’s conference that was the catalyst for starting this blog and opening a Twitter account. I had already started writing my novel, tentatively titled The Way of the Sharaw. But I had no idea where to go or what to do to market the thing.
I’m standing at a crossroad. A place where I’m trying to make choices. Responsible choices. I’ve too much going on and I want to simplify. But then I’m confronted with brokenness, and I ache to help—to do something tangible. Sound familiar?
There’s just something about a creek…or, if you’re from the South or small town Indiana like my Gramma, a crick.
There’s an enormous rock that thrusts into the creek behind my childhood home. I remember lying on my back, stretching fingers and toes long and not even touching the edges. Above it, the sky hung endless blue with the tips of the trees a dark parenthesis on either side.
This summer was a little crazy, and left me feeling a little like a 300-pound gorilla was sitting on my chest. Not quite smashed to death, but gasping for air.
There are a stack beautiful picture books nestled into a tray on my coffee table. They’re my kids favorite books. Probably because the books are actually family albums and full of reminders of the fun times we’ve had together. There’s the rare picture they hate (like the one of my son crying because he’s covered head-to-toe in permanent marker) or prefer the world not to see (like the one with the goofy expression).
We’re coming up to the end of August, and my kids will soon be joining the ranks of bleary-eyed students returning to school. Summer is ending, and I’m not sure how I feel.
A friend of mine emailed me the other day. She’s pregnant, her job is going haywire, her husband is in full-time school, and just that day, her son figured out how to climb out of his crib . . . and forgot how to sleep.