Who-Knows-What

It's three o'clock on a sunny afternoon, and telling steam still rises from a newly drained cup of coffee.  It's a two-cup kind of day.

We spent all morning at dentist's appointments followed by errands, which makes two times in five days that the children and I have spent hours downtown.  And because I had to take Zeke in for x-rays a week ago, I've been to town four times in just over a week.  Considering that in the winter we leave the house for something other than church only about once a month-- sometimes less-- that's too much time running about.

I'm recovering by staring at my hands as I type.  They're pale all over and purple with cold in spots, and they look older than I remember. The skin is dry and a bit chapped from winter air and washing dishes. A few scars from childhood stand against the surface-- barbed wire from Grandpa's cow pasture marks the left; barbed wire from the horse pasture marks the right.  Rusty wire and I have a history, to which my legs and arms also attest.

So I'm tired and a bit loopy.  While the girls tidy the detritus of play, turning houses back into blocks and packing whole villages and populations into cupboards, I type who-knows-what while staring at ten white fingers.

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 Hours later, I return to delete those paragraphs.  They weren't even worth writing, let alone throwing into the internet like a gnawed-on bone. I need reminders that shout, that drown my self-absorption and smallness, to sink them so deep they can't ever find their way home or to hurl them so high they wheel off the outer, orbitless edge.
 
I am glad to be John's best friend and very own wife.  I am blessed to be the mother of joy-filled children.  I am grateful to wake in the night to the thumps and stretches of a baby within, exploring the dark, warm cave like a silver-tailed fish.

These are more than enough to fill a heart.  I'll toss the rest out the window to catch like the rags they are on brambles I leave behind.