Are We All Under This Illusion?

I am here, later than usual today.  It was a long afternoon.  I elected to not give the baby a nap (wondering if she's ready for that - I may not be).  And when I looked at the clock at 2:47 I about died.  It seemed like it should have at least been five.

I ended up taking my notebook and pen outside.  Sometimes it's good to get back to the pen to paper routine.


"I began these pages for myself, in order to think out my own particular pattern of living, my own individual balance of life, work and human relationships.  And since I think best with a pencil in my hand, I started naturally to write.  I had the feeling, when the thoughts first clarified on paper, that my experience was very different from other people's.  (Are we all under this illusion?)" - Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea




Here's what I wrote:

    God, help me.  The baby's eating chips for lunch.  These are the days I wonder why I didn't become a nun.  I am restless, irritable and discontent.  They can't seem to manage themselves for five minutes.  I'm going to go in - make cookies- but I don't really want to.  I want to be alone to read and write-- for about a week.  What's wrong with me?  The mind races too fast to be tamed some days by children's needs.  And maybe this is it.  Part of what I'm to see, acknowledge, even grieve.  The contemplative in me.  I write about being on the cusp and tears and then shove it all away for who knows when, preferring tributes to the children but it's nagging for attention and I haven't picked up that book for a while and I should.  Sometimes even the blog time's not enough, or I wouldn't fantasize about Oxford.  But I do know, joy with contentment, these are choices.  



I wasn't sure I was going to share this.  Wrote it once, why rewrite it?  But the deal is this:  I really have nothing to offer here, except my honesty.  I carry no expertise on raising children, or cooking fancy/cheap meals, publishing know-how tips...nothing.  All I am is one more housewife making choices day to day, choices of joy or irritability, contentment or restlessness.  Daily, I choose to accept grace because it's all I can do to keep myself sane.

I am reading, slowly, savoring, Gift from the Sea and it is beautiful and I intend to share some of it here.  She spoke so many words which rang wonderfully true with me; words of woman stretched and how we need these times of escape to find ourselves again.  This, my escape.  My confessions, life.  My words, offerings of sacrifice and all I have for gifts.  

Submitting at wonderland and,