On my wrist is a bright yellow rubber bracelet with LIVESTRONG imprinted on it.  I plucked it from a small wicker basket on a table next to a guest book at a memorial service where one of the loved ones spoke about the task of sorting through everything left behind -- the clothes, the music, the souvenirs, the tchochke, the scraps of paper -- and of how each item had meant something to the person who kept and carried them. The meaning they had held was a mystery, forever emptied out of them, and yet the temptation to hold those items, like still fragments of that lost friend, was strong. He spoke of how how he was inspired to value love and live lighter.

Thousands of miles from where I sit now with the bracelet on my wrist, there is a white shingled house with a bedroom that was once mine and remains a shrine to my childhood self. In the bedroom sits a sturdy set of Ethan Allen bookcases painted a soft sunshine yellow, because that was my favorite color when I was three.  The top of the bookcases are open shelves; the bottom, cabinets with slatted doors.  When I was a preschooler, my family moved to a new city, and one day, while my mother was unpacking boxes, I crawled into the bottom of the one of these bookcases, shut the doors, and fell asleep.  My mother spent what must have seemed to her to be frantic hours searching our new home before finding me there, while I have no memory of it at all.

Now too small a space to hold all of me, the cabinets hold (among other things) an old cardboard shoebox filled with odd scraps that formed the butt-ends of my days and ways: a chewed up old pencil, a single crumpled page from a Far Side daily calendar, a bent nail, a quarter and numerous other things I've forgotten. There is also a sheet of notebook paper in the box that explains what each item is and why it is important to me.

Each item was carefully placed in the box and labeled after I spent a summer helping my mother clear out her parents' house. There were shelves and closets full of things. There was an attic and a basement crammed with dusty boxes.  There was furniture and photographs. There were old letters and old bank statements and old receipts and piles of Playboy magazine. There was a child's baseball uniform for a grown man already in his grave, old 78 records with nothing to play them on, a doll dressed as Little Red Riding Hood and a round flowered tin full of tobacco. What ought we to keep? What did it all mean: to them or to us or to anyone?

But far from being inspired to live lighter at the time, I was inspired to document, to label a box of detritus so that someone sifting through it could see the meaning in a bent nail and not wonder at it with a sigh. But as I think of that box, of that crumpled paper and bent nail and all the other things I can't recall, I don't remember the meaning they had myself. And that sheet of notebook paper? It's a letter to me. I'm the beneficiary and the executor of my own estate. And I think, the next time I visit that cardboard box, it may be time to honor myself and let go: to learn that lesson of loving strong and living light.  Well, except that chewed up pencil.  I might not be quite ready to part with that yet.

"I don't want to get up and I don't want to go to school!" my daughter Janie yelled when she heard me chime "Time to get up!" this morning.  ("Well, maybe tonight you will go to sleep on time so you won't be tired tomorrow," I found myself muttering, then added mentally, "And I won't either.")

It was a battle to get Janie's clothes on and a battle to get her out the door.  At the time we ought to be leaving the house, she was clothed, but still hadn't eaten breakfast.  ("I don't want to eat, because I don't want to go to school!")  I weighed the odds and decided just to give up on trying to make the bus and drive her today.  So I plopped her in the back of the car with a piece of toast and we headed off to school, where she managed to run in just in time (and in a considerably better mood after having grudgingly eaten the toast in the car).

On my drive home, a little bird darted out from the side of the road and began to take flight just as I drove past.  There was no time for it or for me to react and it hit my front bumper with a sickening thud.  I stopped and watched, wondering "What should I do?" as it thrashed for just a moment and then lay still before I had time to answer my own question.

On any other day, that bird could have flown low over the street and my car would not have been there to hit it.  If I had decided to try to have Janie catch the bus today (which she might have, though it would have been close), my car would not have been there to hit it.  If Mark had gotten Janie to bed earlier while I was out last night or if I had not gone out and put her to bed myself, maybe she would not have been so cranky this morning and I wouldn't have been on the road.  Or maybe the car behind me would have startled the bird and hit it instead if I hadn't been there.  My little decisions — my small, seemingly random, actions — affect so many other things, but I don't always know how and why.

Last night, while Mark was trying to wrangle Janie in to bed, I was attending a talk by a Zen Buddhist who said, "Things are.  There is a reason that they are.  But we do not know the reason, only that they are and that there is a reason."  There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow.  I want to know what it is, but it's enough to know that it is.

I've heard a lot about the A&E series Intervention, but since I've never wanted to spring for the cost of satellite or an extended cable package, I'd never actually watched it myself until this week: I followed The Discovering Alcoholic's link to streaming video versions of the show on Hulu and watched an episode about a drug addict named Alyson. The majority of the program was focused on Alyson's drug use and unhappiness, as well as the distress of her family. The intervention itself was quite a small part of the show and the only part of recovery we saw was a stated willingness to start rehab, followed a sober and smiling Alyson, crying tears of gratitude as she received her one year chip at the end of the show.

The show was filled with pain and drama. And there was a time when I used to love that kind of thing, in real life as well as on screen. During my daytime TV watching days, my tastes ran more to the Jerry Springer side of things than anything as staid and dull as Oprah. I loved watching crazy people fighting. Wow, look at them. Can you believe the stuff they do? The intensity of emotions and the out-of-control situations were thrilling to me.

Yet what I noticed about the drama this time was that it was boring. Can you believe it? Boring! Yep, terribly, horribly, deadly boring. Sure, I could relate to the pain. I really felt for Alyson and her family. I could see them hurting, and while my experiences, my story, my unmanageablity took a different form, I knew that hurt. But the part of the show that was supposed to keep me on the edge of my seat gasping "I can't believe she would do that!" completely failed to enthrall me. Nothing that happened was surprising or shocking; it was predictable. "Yep, there's that same old addict stuff. There's that same old codependent dance."

I wanted Alyson and those around her to hit bottom and get on to the interesting stuff, the good stuff, the recovery stuff already. Instead, it was an hour of watching the sound and fury that signifies nothing; everyone was spinning madly, screaming wildly, flailing around, in a loud, crazy dance, but no one was going anywhere. When the journey really began — one step, one day at a time — the cameras stopped rolling, the screen went dark, and everyone moved quietly on their way. But perhaps that's just as it should be.

Every year in February, I'm grateful for one thing: it's short. By February, I feel as if spring is so close, yet still so terribly far away, and my mood is generally at its lowest and darkest point in the whole year. So, every year in March, I'm thankful for one thing: it's not February anymore! Yay!

This past February was a rough one, with our annual family stomach virus hitting right on schedule and killing nearly two full weeks in one blow. Then we had a number of little chaotic, crazy family things going on. All of that led me to write fewer blog posts in a month than I think I ever had, and most of those were linked out to The Second Road in order to fulfill my commitment to them.

But now February is over, March is here and I'm ready to pull myself together with a sigh of relief. I hope to get back to posting here more often and regularly. I have a few exciting things coming up for me this month (because it's blessed March and not hideous February), and I can't wait to share.

Happy March, people!

Image credit: Photo by F.S.M. on Flickr Licensed under Creative Commons

I've calculated the precise moment at which mothering instincts kick in, and that moment is 3:30 a.m.

Actually, I'm extrapolating a little. I'm not sure that it was actually 3:30 a.m. the very first time my own mothering instincts kicked in. I'm not sure what time it really was, because I was (understatement coming) a little out of it in the wake of my son's birth. But it felt as dark and hushed and lonely, as scary and large as 3:30 a.m. when I handed that tiny newborn over to a nurse for a routine blood test. I can still see how tiny his foot was as she drew it out of the swaddling blanket to prick it, and I can still hear how he wailed as if he were experiencing unimaginable torture as those tiny red drops beaded on his heel. I wanted to grab him away from the nurse and scratch her eyes out and never let anyone touch him again. And when it was all over, I apologized to him for letting someone hurt him -- even though I knew that particular blood draw was in the best interest of his health and safety -- and I cried and cried as I held him. It was then that I really knew, really felt in every part of me, that I was his mama.

My daughter Janie had her little five-year-old friend Valerie from kindergarten sleep over recently. After lots of giggling and playing and holding hands and snuggling, after they finally fell asleep, I dimmed their bedroom lights, closed the door and climbed into bed myself. I used to be a heavy sleeper -- my college roommate had to shake me once to get me to hear the fire alarm that was going off in our building -- but now I have super powered Mama ears, carefully attuned to the whispering sound of little feet on the hall carpet.

At 3:30 a.m. I heard those whispering feet, knew them as Valerie's and ran to get her. She saw me and burst into tears, "I want my mommy!" I scooped her up and she clung to my neck whimpering, "Where's my mommy? I want my mommy." I walked into the bedroom and sat down on the bed, with Valerie's head tucked under my chin, and rubbed her back.

"I'll tell you what," I whispered, "It's the middle of the night right now, but your mommy is supposed to come join us for breakfast in just a few more hours when it gets light out. Why don't you stay here and rest with me for a little while and see if you can sleep a little more. But if you don't feel better in a few minutes, we'll call your mommy. Ok?" Valerie nodded and nestled closer.

As I held her, there in the night, I had that same feeling I had when the nurse handed me back my newborn son: that I was her (temporary) mama and it was my job to lunge at all things hurtful and scary and scratch their eyes. I thought about how much her own mama loved her and wanted her safe. And I knew that, there in the night with the shadows crowding close, I was the nightlight keeping watch over her, the eyes her mother left behind to guard her.

In a few minutes, Valerie's breathing was soft and slow, as she drifted off to sleep again with her head on my chest. I inched her slowly down onto the bed; then I climbed in next to her, pulled the covers over us both and put an arm over her to protect her from needles and ax murderers and big, scary monsters and rats and bears and child molesters and dark shadows. And I stayed there until Janie jumped on us, and they both ran from the room giggling in the morning light.