I can barely catch the tail of inspiration before duty calls.
I try hard to jot notes in the cracks, but my writing needs concentrated time to gain momentum.
I feel like I used to write more, to write better.
But I also only had two children, one dying, one supremely well-behaved. Both immobile.
These days, I could write about crushed crackers in couch cushions, about Target tantrums, about the good and the bad and the Legos. I could write about what it’s like to learn as I go. I could write about how hard it all is. I could say that it’s beautiful. I could say that I'm grateful and that I'm tired. But mostly grateful.
I remember, in the beginning here, writing was a way to wrest meaning from the meaningless, to rediscover that there was anything good in the world.
There is so much good in the world.
Writing a guest blog for a palliative care site is never going to be easy... not even when these three cracker-crunching boys are all in school, or college. I am grateful that you can see the good in the world. Just today I was thinking -- marveling -- at how much you appreciate your children and all the details you catalog about each one of them. I loved you and your sister always, but I didn't know enough then to appreciate every detail so ardently. I treasure the details I recall... words you invented so long ago (dingbell) and the ones you collected in high school (afflatus). You've always been a wordsmith, Jenni!
ReplyDeleteOn that note I need to get out Ryan’s book and write about the last month while he sleeps.
ReplyDeleteI love all of your words. Soft and sometimes hard and truthful, all meaningful.