Spring at the Farm in Pictures

 Nice thorns on this one!!!

 Spring Cleaning. Conditioning the wood stairs.

 First snake caught and cuddled.

 Duckling hatch!

And Dandelions and violets and buttercups and green, green grass. Hello Spring, we missed you.

Holly's Ballet

This weekend was super jammed packed with all the things I wanted to do.....and Holly's ballet pictures. The reality was that I could not go to a writing workshop in Perry, DemiCon, the ballet pictures, Sample Sunday, book club, and Youth Sunday at church.

My friend Diana sent me a lovely letter a few months back, to sum up, it said......choose her. Choose your girl. Choose your child. They won't be a child long. It was longer and more lovely than that summary, but that is what came into my head while trying to make the logistics of the weekend work.

Holly's ONLY chosen activity is ballet. She trains all year, practises at home all week, it is her chosen identity. The pictures matter to her, a LOT. Last year I had her grandma take her while I did DemiCon. She had fun, but was squirrely which is Holly's outward sign that she is emotionally stressed.

So this year, I chose Holly.

No workshop. No DemiCon cosplay. No dinner out with friends. Just Holly. Grandma watched Lily and Isaac and I took just Holly so I could really focus on her.

Saturday night the girls said they were super sad I would miss church and I told them I planned on going and skipping Sample Sunday as a vendor, because they matter to me and I know they worked hard on the songs. They jumped into my arms and hugged me long and hard. Holly had tears in her eyes.

I chose them.

Sunday I stayed for the children's choir and bell performance at church, left late and just visited Sample Sunday, then on to Book Club, home by bedtime for tucking in and story reading.

I have no regrets about slowing down and just being with them. I choose them while they still want me to, while it is still an option. If I don't? That will affect our relationship exponentially as the years go on. What is the saying? Listen to them now, every little thing. Later they will come to you with the big stuff. Why? The little things now ARE big to THEM.

I choose them. I choose to stop and listen. I choose to be with them, mindfully, when I am with them. It may seem silly, it is just pictures, right? I could take them myself after all. That's not the point. Picture day is part of ballet culture and I chose wisely when I picked this studio for the principle of modesty and the training that allows them to actually and safely train children in ballet technique.

Holly was not squirrely this time. Maybe it was another year of maturity, maybe that I paid attention to sugar intake that morning, or maybe it had to do with her feeling emotionally grounded, secure, loved, and heard. Her big grin every time she looked for me and met my eyes, not seeing me staring at my phone, but seeing me see her....that's how I know in my heart that this made a difference.

I chose right.

Question Asked and Answered

This came up: Do I feel like I missed an entire lifetime and potential by abandoning writing, by not moving to Savannah, GA in 1999, by not revising and returning the one thing I submitted in 1998, by having kids, working as an adjunct instead of pursuing an academic career, ect? 

Wow.

The thing is? The answer is yes. Yes, of course I missed out and there are a million could a have beens.  Of course I wonder.

I also really love my life, the life I have right now. I really don't think I was ready for anything more in 1999. I have PSTD and in 1999 and a stranger knocking on my door after dark sent me into a full blown panic attack, hiding in a closet, for example. I was 19! Geesh. I am much better now.

When I graduated, my adviser said to me, something along these lines, Don't write for your job. Lay bricks for a living. Do something else. Learn about things. Live. Then you can write from your heart and keep it an art.

Sage advice. I followed it. Graduate school was history, architecture, and non-fiction. I went to work in the field of historic preservation. I was so busy and deep into the movement of saving houses that I forgot about people. Then I had children and they became my focus which evolved into teaching them and farming and teaching online classes. Always learning things. Living.

I wasn't ready before now to write again. Now that I am back in the habit, it feels good! It isn't a chore, it is artful, and I am turning more time to it but balancing it well with family and farm. I know things about life that I could not have at 19 and I am grateful for that.

Now, too, I am venturing along with Chad into the study of permaculture and regenerative farming. It is interesting and I plan to write more through the year as I learn.

In January, I chose the word Sabotage as my word for the year. Met with well meaning critics concerned about the negativity of the word, I waffled a bit about using it. Still, I did. It has proven to be a fantastic choice. Seriously fantastic. Every time I  start dragging my feet or second guessing myself, a friend will simply type Sabotage and then I do the thing that moves this all forward. Usually the friend's name is Jen. Ha.

Questions like these can sabotage my writing effort. Sure, I think them, but there are also no conclusive proofs that I wouldn't have died in a car crash driving out East or that anything I wrote then would have been published. I could very well have ended up doing what I am doing now, no matter what.

Easter and Brisket: Pictures