Readers

I'm not one for finding pretty photos online and blogging them as if I'd created them. But when I came across this quote last night, I couldn't help but share it. I believe so strongly that kids should fall in love with reading, and I am very blessed that my parents helped me to do so.

And before Millie could even speak her handful of words, she was already dragging books across the room for me to read. It makes me so proud, because as much as I don't get right as a mother, I feel like I've gotten this right. I'm really proud to have a daughter who loves handing me a story, crawling up on my lap, and sinking into me as the pages turn.

It's one case where I'm glad she turned out exactly like me.

Thanks, Abe

I was going to write this post to explain my bad mood. I was going to tell you I didn't get the scholarship and how it crushed me. I was going to write out the whole list of reasons why I'm upset, why I feel disillusioned, why I'm listening to sorrowful Beethoven's sonatas, and why the whole world is mean.

But then I came across the quote from Abe. I love Abe.

No. Not that one. That one was on Pinterest and it made me smile.

This one- the one I keep hanging on my refrigerator where I can be reminded of it daily:

I am not a college student.
I am a mother, a wife, a daughter, a sister, a friend, a writer, and a girl who loves whole milk and cherry pie.

Until I figure out a way for school, I will work hard at all of the above.

Commissioned Art

"Every day one should at least hear one little song, read one good poem, 

see one fine painting and -- if at all possible -- speak a few sensible words." 

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Maybe it's a bit egomaniacal, but there are a few things I have secretly wanted for quite a long time. Not really so much things, but certain actions...

Things like a boy writing me a love song and singing to me at a window. I don't know why this would be particularly important other than referencing a little Romeo and Juliet, hence romantic and necessary. (No, this hasn't happened yet...although, Neidy's sweet dedication to me the other day is still in my head. So sweet.)

And then there is something that I never knew I needed, but became more and more fascinated with every time Beka blogged...yes, the Beka who was one of my guest bloggers and truly one of my most favorite people I've never technically met, if that makes any sense.

(Selling a few pieces in a cafe)

Canvas after canvas, this girl paints sweet, beautiful, hopeful works of art. She takes an amazing quote and transforms it to something even better, somehow. I can't even remember how the conversation started to be honest, but it had something to do with e. e. cummings, a poet who I love. After a dozen or so emails, she was going to create a canvas for me- for me! She gave me a few ideas and suggestions, and I gave her my one of my favorite e. e. quotes. I told Sky excitedly, "Beka is painting me something!" (I tend to forget bloggers, although friends, do not live next door and everyone in my life does not know them. Even so, he seemed excited, too.)

And just tonight, on her blog post (with my name spotlighted, making me slightly feel like a rockstar), she made me a little mournful about a chick (you'll just have to read it), and then she posted something that made me completely light up on an otherwise not so light evening.

Intrigued? You should be.

Another preview

I'm not going to give it all away- you'll have to visit her blog and see it for yourself!

But you know what I can cross off my silly little list?

Someone awesome painting something gorgeous for me. I'm a little awestruck.


*All pictures on this post are Beka's own, with her permission.

A Quote

"Life will break you. 

Nobody can protect you from that, 

and living alone won't either, 

for solitude will also break you with its yearning. 

You have to love. You have to feel. 

It is the reason you are here on earth. 

You are here to risk your heart. 

You are here to be swallowed up. 

And when it happens that you are broken, 

or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, 

let yourself sit by an apple tree 

and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, 

wasting their sweetness. 

Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could." 

— Louise Erdrich

*image from http://www.freefoto.com

All is Fair...

Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does.

Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.
James A. Baldwin

It would be a lie to say that I never think of it. It can't be compared to anything else. You aren't supposed to break down pieces of someone you love, analyze them, and separate the different sides to this degree- at least, I never have in the past. But when you love a man, and that man happens to be a solider (and already, happens is not even the right word here- chooses), it puts everything under a microscope in a unique way.

I remember the first time I realized that he was in Afghanistan. It sounds strange, but saying goodbye to him in Flora meant we wouldn't see each other. Although I worried about him to a certain degree, it was hard to wrap my mind around where he would actually go when he got on a plane. A couple of weeks after he had gone, I pulled up older pictures of Andy and him, and stopped on one. My breath caught, and I felt like the room was spinning. He had a gorgeous grin, and the sweetest face that I wanted to hold and kiss. But he was in his uniform, and held a helmet in one hand, and a huge weapon up high in the other. I cropped the picture to just his face. I felt like a punch in the stomach to look at the whole thing. I can look at it now- it took a while.

Most times, he is just Sky. He's a guy that I adore more than anyone on this earth. He is my boyfriend with the silver ring still on his finger. Who he works for and what he occasionally plays a very tiny part. There are small twinges of it that can fade with a simple kiss. Then there are

times when I feel it start to creep in- when he got his hair cut, for instance, and it was like a flashback to his leave visit. There are the times I open up a closet and see camouflage everywhere. But his hair grows again, and the closet door shuts. It can be a small piece of life.

But the fact is that he is a solider, too. I am shaken by it when he hears a sound that is too close to sounds he heard in his little room. If one afternoon spent on a video chat with him could be engraved on me so deeply-listening to explosions while we talked-then I wonder how he can act so calm even though his heart races. He tells stories about the months over there, and I am mezmorized, but sometimes it sinks in slightly that they aren't stories. They are his memories.

It is ingrained deeper when most of our talk about the future swirls around his next deployment. Life is broken into sections; plans of what we want to do before the next time he leaves, how life will be the months we're apart, and what kinds of things will happen after it's

over. People ask me all the time if he will ever have to go back. The hard-to-swallow truth is that he will always be going back somewhere. We will always live three years at a time.

While I admit that the thought of the next deployment already could bring me to tears if I think too long, I also recognize how thankful it makes me. Most couples think they have more of a guarantee to always have each other, whether they should think that or not. But the uncertainty makes me grateful for everything just a bit more. Bittersweet, maybe- but I think there is

something amazing in the kind of love that can surpass distance, time, loneliness even.

I have the time I have now, and that is what I want to focus on now- our lives together at this moment and months down the road. He is here, and ideas and plans fall like a cool rain around us. There is no umbrella. We open our hands, lift our faces, and dance when no one is watching.