Courage

I was listening to Chloe read. She was reading from her fourth grade reader. We sat across from each other in the dining room. I had the curriculum open to the lesson. I was knitting. Chloe is getting another pair of socks. She loves the first pair I knit for her so much I’m knitting them again in a different color and a different design. She reads strong and clear with expression above her age. I love listening to her read. I try to stay completely focused on her story. If I wander in my thoughts then I won’t be able to guide her through the discussion later. She was reading and it was a really nice story about a boy learning the meaning of responsibility. The story was full of choices and courage, set in the last century farming community. And I’m totally bawling my eyes out, listening. These teenage boys want to be mature and take on grown up duties. They love their school and take on extra challenges. They make hard choices to sacrifice a dream to work for the common good of the family. They remind me of my brothers. They are pushing themselves beyond their abilities and it seems that it will be too much for them. Then the community notices and tractors fill their fields and the job gets done and the boys are spoken to like men. I’m loosing it, emptying the tissue box, all over the table. Chloe keeps reading. It was a time when a man’s job was to be envied. Children wanted to grow up and become men and women. It takes courage and discipline to become men and women. It doesn’t take anything at all to just grow up, but to really become mature takes courage. It takes denial. It takes sacrifice for the common good of the family, church, community. It takes love.

I had no idea I would be so sensitive. Perhaps it’s my age, perhaps it is that I’m really tired. I’ve been pushing myself to reach beyond, to stretch the boundaries of my capabilities physically. I’ve been saying to myself that it won’t do to sit down and wait for death. Get up and get at it and stay alive, be alive. Accomplish something. Treasure the days. I got rid of my lazy-boy chair. I didn’t buy it or even want it. I never had it in my mind that I needed a lazy-boy chair. It was given to me years ago and when it got old I was given another one. So this spring when I was talking to myself about my habits I decided to give that lazy chair away. I would put myself into that chair and it wasn’t really comfortable unless it was reclined. Then I would nearly fall asleep. It was such a lot of effort to get out of it that I generally just stayed in it for the duration. Anyway, I bought myself a small upright wing-back chair. For the short-time I’m in the living room it is so easy to sit down and stand up. No levers or moving parts. Small so that their is more space in the room now. I don’t miss that lazy chair at all. I stay busy all day with usual duties and when we are done with the day we relax on the couch for a few minutes and then go to bed. In the mornings after I do my early chores I don’t go into the living room to sit and drink my coffee any more. I take my coffee right here to my computer and start typing. It has changed my whole life around. Starting with the decision to get rid of the lazy chair.

Anytime anyone wants to change a habit and develop a new one it takes courage. Growing up takes courage. Being grateful takes courage. All the good stuff takes courage and growing. Their was a reason why I began to form old habits, the ones I’m breaking from now. I sat down. Their was a reason for this. Changing that habit means taking a good look at why I sat down and dealing with it. When I quit smoking it was the same thing. I had to change my habit but I also had to address the very deep intimate reason why I had begun to smoke in the first place. Beginning to quit an old habit isn’t as hard as seeing it all the way through to a new habit. It causes an upheaval in the structure of ones psyche. It takes courage to take a good look at ones self and make the hard choices. Usually it’s about something completely different. The boys in Chloe’s story hadn’t developed any bad habits yet. They were developing character through courage because of the strength of the relationship in their family. Courage may be about finding strength to endure a situation and handle it in an honorable way. Debbie found the courage to honor God with her cancer and her brother and sisters found the courage to surround her with their love when it wasn’t easy or pleasant. Courage in an adult is a noble thing. But to see courage in a child is one of the most beautiful things in this life. It should be named with the seven wonders. Very often courage is about sacrifice for the good of others, family, community, etc. This kind of courage is the most honorable and sometimes gets the title of hero. I think it is wonderful to point out the courage in children when you see it. Give the child a hero badge. Let them know you saw them make that sacrifice. Let them know that courage is a beautiful thing and that we all need it and learn from each other. Courage doesn’t mean that you aren’t afraid, it means that you were afraid and did it anyway. It’s also ok to have tears when you read about courage.

Elizabeth Williams - daily writing exercise - 1,007 words

The Farm

It was a place of freedom in my childhood. In my mind I’m drawn to this place. I’m drawn to the memories it holds for me. A time and a place where imaginations ran free and creativity blossomed. There holds for me a kind of magic at the farm, in my memory. In my soul. It is a grounding by which all other standards must give way, be measured to. The memory of this place balances me. It was a time in my life where children were free to roam. There was a safety in this place. Not like the safety of today. Todays children must always be watched by adults. There is no freedom in that. There was a swing set up on the hill in front of the barn. Not like today’s tiny swings, but a real swing, as tall as the sky, which swung over the heavens if you persisted. There was only one swing and a person could exit this place for a moment just by sitting on that swing and be far far away in other lands, either gliding gracefully across the fields or flying high above the trees.

There was an orchard full of apple trees, a tractor and a wagon loaded with bushel baskets. The orchards were mystical places indeed, guarded by rows of poplar sentries. There was an apple room with a long machine which rolled the apples and sorted them by size. The room smelled deliciously sweet. It was usually closed and off limits to wandering children unless they were helping. There was a breezeway where many a game was played. Then there was the barn. The barn held a myriad of options for growing children. There was the bottom part, with animals and stalls. Small rooms for storage or hens. I had a few hens when I grew older. The upper level which you enter from the top of the hill was full of hay. Sweet, aromatic hay. It was baled and stacked and the the room was huge. We created kingdoms and domains. We tunneled and made caves and hid and camped and played. Beside the hay loft was a drop to the lower level. A long rope hung ready and we would fly over the opening and come back to the loft. It was dangerous, but danger was what made it fun. Danger was what drew us in.

Behind the barn and the houses the hill dropped down to a creek, which wound it’s way across the back border of the property. The creek was intriguing for sure. In the early winter it became a skating rink. We sat on a log at the edge and tied on our skates. We had snow shovels which we pushed along to clear the snow. We skated until our feet were numb and our noses and fingers frozen. We would go inside to warm chocolate milk and gently rub our feet and hands and endure the pain of frostbite. But we would do the same thing again the next day. As the winter grew longer the ice split from the weight of the snow, we turned to snowshoe adventures and skis. There was never a boring day on the farm.

In the Spring we turned our attention to the melting snow and stayed away from the creek. The ever changing landscape as the snow melted gave opportunity for parades and acting games when I was usually a witch. Not the good witch. I was always the evil witch. I terrorized my younger siblings during these games. We tapped the maples lining the driveway and boiled down the sap over a fire. When the water subsided and the ground was free again we climbed the tallest pines and built homes with hammers and nails and pieces of wood we could lift up the trunks. The plan was to build ourselves a fort as high as possible and sit up there gazing over the land. We weren’t actually allowed to do any of this. This is what we did because we were free. We didn’t climb trees in front of our parents. But our parents weren’t playing outdoors with us. We went outdoors to play because that’s what children did. That was how parents took ‘time out’. That was how a mother could get anything done. As the spring turned into summer the creek drew us back and we fished on the bank and swam in the muddy waters careful to avoid the leeches. We built a bridge which actually worked and a raft which we took downstream and had to abandon because we couldn’t get it to go upstream. We were actually thrilled that we were escaping down river and planning our lives ahead and then we bumped into a fence put by the neighbor farm to keep unwanted riff from floating across his part of the world.

We weren’t the only family living on the farm. There were ten of us in one family, twelve if you count our parents. There was another family with a lot of children and the farmer and his wife had a few of their own. We were our own community. There were enough children living there that we could have a pretty good game of baseball. We called it something else and everyone moves up a spot throughout the game so that everyone gets a turn at every post. Nobody wins but everyone tries to get a home run. The lawn in front of the main farm house was plenty large enough for a game of baseball. The driveway was made of gravel and had a large parking area at the top of the hill. We played marbles, and games where you throw a stick at the nearest person, if you hit them then they are it. We played a game called war, where you take over the driveway by drawing lines and throwing stones. I don’t remember all the games but it took hours of time and so much enjoyment. There was magic on the farm. The memory draws me in at times. It’s not the same when you go back to visit. The farm has changed, or perhaps it’s me that’s changed. I’m older now, everything feels smaller and less intriguing. Everyone else has grown up as well. The magic of it was there for us for a moment. It has moved on, but in my memory it will always be a magical place.

Elizabeth Williams - daily writing exercise, 1,081 words

Breathe

Breathe

I miss you now

At the end of the year

More than ever.

I want you to see

Another New Year.

My heart is broken

You aren’t here.

Somehow I must find a way

To walk again.

My grief is heavy

As I learn to walk

To smile and nurture and care.

And God says to me

“Breathe

I’ll teach you

I’ll carry you

Gently through the days

Just Breathe”.

I breathe

It is really hard

All I can do is breathe

And God carries me

He holds me firm

He teaches me to walk

To smile and care

and nurture.

My heart is still broken,

You are still not here,

My grief is still heavy,

But look,

I’m walking.

I’m learning to walk again.

Elizabeth Williams

written in December 2013

revised today 8/6/14

The Cat Who Grieved

He lay curled up in the straw, in his box by the back door. Each time I looked, there he was. The days turned into weeks and still he lay there. He must be getting up sometimes, to eat or pee. I put his dish next to his little bed so he could smell it. His water was close by. He is a barn cat. He was born in the garage and went to live in the barn when he grew up. His mother was a small cat who we met at a farm. She was born outside under some stuff, and when we went to the farm to pick up our milk she begged us to take her home. She wasn’t old enough to leave her mother, but her mother had died and so we brought her home. We called her Amelia. There never was a smarter more playful cat than Amelia. She would hide under Chloe’s bed and when I went to tuck her in at night Amelia would reach her paw out and scratch me. Then she would run away to another room. I would have to lift up the bed skirts before I got close to the bed. Sometimes I would take a big step right up onto Chloe’s bed just to say goodnight. Other times she would hide at the top of the stairs and peek her head around to see if you were watching. She would reach her paws under the bathroom door when you were in there. She was so much fun. Then one day she decided that she wanted to be a mother. We found her in a box in the garage with 5 kittens. They were gorgeous, beautiful little things. We got her all set up but she wanted to be left alone. So we left her for a couple of weeks. We set up a food and water station in the garage but we left her alone. One time she let me babysit. She meowed for me and I went over to see her. She got out of the box and came back and forth a few times before she went outside. I watched the babies, they were getting bigger and more curious. Their eyes opened gradually and they began to wobble away from their home. One day she took an unruly kitten and put him far away from the others. I watched in horror as the little thing cried while she nursed the others. After awhile she went and got him and he didn’t make the mistake of straying again. He snuggled in and she cleaned him up. I didn’t know that cat mothers used ‘time out’. When they got older the whole family moved into the barn. They had a beautiful home carved out in the straw. Chloe set up a station for their food and water. The days were full of wonderful kitten adventures and I took a video of Chloe playing with them. She stood on the play structure at the top of the slide with her fishing pole. On the end of the line she had a rubber toy. She cast out onto the grass and the kittens chased the rubber toy across the lawn and part way up the slide. She had a lot of fun with them. Amelia was a great tree climber. She climbed trees like a squirrel, jumping from limb to limb. It was fantastic to see. Soon the whole cat family were climbing trees and playing in the branches. As the kittens grew bigger, Amelia grew smaller. She was not the tease she used to be, but a gentle, loving, wise mother cat. She taught them to catch mice and to eat them. They began to outgrow her and we put a sign out by the road. Chloe had given them names and one by one they went to new homes, to be the companion to a little girl or a grandmother. We stopped giving them away after three. The last two were inseparable. One was black with small white specks. We called him Speckles. The other gray with some white. His name is Fifi (feefee). They walked side by side together. They lay together all wrapped up with each other. They ate together and climbed trees together. In the mornings they would follow me out to the chicken coop to open the doors with me. They would sit by the coop door and watch the chickens coming out, one by one. Then they would follow me back to the barn where I would feed them. One day Amelia was gone. She was gone for several days before she came back. But she came back to die. She wanted to see her kittens and us first. She had a lot of horrible injuries and we think she may have been attacked by coyotes. Coyotes kill a lot of cats around here. We buried her under the lilacs, beside the well pit. Chloe painted a cross and decorated it with flowers and painted her name boldly across it. Mark put it in the ground and we said prayers over her. We thanked God for letting us have such a wonderful pet and to please take care of her now. It was a difficult moment and very difficult for Chloe. Speckles and Fifi became even closer after that. They began to sleep at the back of the house so we moved their box of straw. I still found them sleeping in the barn though when I went out to feed the chickens. They were cool cats. They would catch sparrows in the laying house, together with Shelby our golden retriever. Speckles could hold a sparrow in one paw up against the wall while waiting for Shelby to grab it. Fifi could jump high and grab one out of the air. Amazing feats for those two barn cats. Then one day Speckles was gone. Mark found him on the road and we buried him next to his mother and put a cross over him. Chloe painted his name on it. Fifi watched and sat with us at his grave. Later that day I saw him in his box. He slept and slept. He slept like that for a long time. Then one day, a couple of months later, I went to see him and pet him and he was gone. I looked around and he was walking down the path. He began to leave his box more and more. He is still not the same as he used to be. He may never be. But he has a new routine and I’m a part of it. He doesn’t help with the chickens anymore, nor have I seen him climbing trees, yet. But he catches critters and helps with the gardening. He is learning to live again. We love Fifi.

Elizabeth Williams, daily writing exercise, 1,146 words.

School Days

It’s a new day, a new week and the first Monday in August, 2014. Today is also the first day of our new school year. Grade Four. Chloe has been excited about grade four for a long time. We got the new books before the end of third grade. Recently I’ve been finding her on the floor next to the boxes with grade four books all around her, deep into one or another of her new texts. She has already read the health book, science, history and discovered the stories in her readers. I’m familiar with fourth grade. I’ve taught it before. It is a wonderful transitional year. Fourth is the first in three years of deeper learning, broadening subject material and finer tuning of the reading and writing skills. Children have more of the finer motor skills. Chloe is learning to bake and she can do her own cast on in knitting now. She has more focus when writing. Her picture books look more detailed and she can now type out her stories more quickly. She is ready for more learning. I love to teach a student who can’t wait to learn. With the right curriculum it isn’t even really teaching. It’s learning together. Clearing the way. Opening the doors. Setting the stage. It is up to me to make learning easier for her. I have to learn to be quiet sometimes. To moderate my activities so that they aren’t that interesting to her so that she won’t be distracted. I have to put my singing and bursts of enthusiasm on mute while she figures out long division, looks up words in the dictionary, reads her lessons. History and science are together-time subjects. I love learning as well and could do these years over and over. I haven’t become tired of the primary grades yet. We have environments in our home. They don’t look like much to an outsider. They sure don’t look any different than any other time but during school days they take on different meanings. The dining room table. There is one seat there which she loves to sit in to do Language and to read to me. I sit across from her and either knit or crochet while she reads. It is our first meeting place since her day begins. She does her journaling, math drills, spelling and poetry without me, although I’m not far away and get caught up in the wonderful poetry included in her curriculum. But we always meet up for reading. She reads to me in the mornings and I read to her in the evenings. She has a little wooden desk which we bought for her when she started preschool, around age two. She prefers to sit there to do her math. It has a lift up top and a little groove across the back of the top where she can put her pencils. She keeps a pencil sharpener there and a huge eraser which she got from her sister. The eraser says in big letters, OOPS. This is her usual place for battling through her necessary daily math page. She has a little bulletin board on the wall in front of her desk where she pins her favorite things. History, science and health are couch subjects. We sit together there in the afternoons and study all kinds of things. Places, people, times, body, manners, oceans, seeds, jungles, teeth and bones. There is a huge map of the world in the next room where we can stand and discover some of the world’s places. She has another desk in the sunny room with a computer where she studies Spanish and practices typing skills. Then there is the piano bench where she sits a couple of times a day and works out new songs, plays the familiar and pounds out scales and arpeggio’s. I love the time of day when she practices her piano. Listening to her play, while I fold laundry, wash dishes or bake bread. This year I am writing and illustrating a children’s book. I know that she will be playing the piano, learning Spanish or struggling through her math while I’m deciding between words, which ones to put on a page or sketching out numerous options for pictures. The tricky part for me will be to be quiet while she works. I’m a big girl though, so I think that this year I can handle that. I love our school days. I love the structure. I think that most parents love the structure of school days no matter where their children school. I love the challenge of keeping school special for her. No grind going on here. Except for math. This year we will begin going to the library again. Every two weeks. I want to read children’s books and see what’s newly published, and by whom. I want to start doing book reviews on my blog. Children’s books of course. Chloe wants to discover new worlds. I’m curious to see which books will draw her in and where her interests are. She wants to learn about other countries so I bought her a country scrapbook. The book will guide her to research the country of her choice and step by step put together a book about it. She wakes up now while I’m writing this. She is ready for her new year. It will be a short school day since many subjects do reviews and introductions on day one and some don’t even have a lesson yet. We have planned to go to the fair this afternoon. You can’t beat a school which starts right off the first day with a field trip to the county fair. It will be a sunny day and not too hot although it may get toasty on the pavement. We plan to go on some rides and eat fair food, ice cream, see the animals and play some games. Last year we got Max the penguin. I wonder what we will get this year. Once a year we eat cotton candy. Well, we don’t really eat much. We buy it, taste it and save the rest. It feels good to have it. Everyone should know what cotton candy tastes like.

Elizabeth Williams, daily writing exercise 1,042 words.

My Blog

It’s the first day of August and this marks the end of the first three weeks of my 1,000 words daily exercise. I have really enjoyed this and I plan to continue to write 1,000 words a day. I don’t always blog what I write, sometimes I do if I think it would be interesting to anybody. It isn’t great writing, it’s just writing. I haven’t been writing long enough to have great writing. I don’t spend long enough with each piece to have it qualify as great. Usually I sit down to write, open my program and just start writing. I let myself discover what is on the inside. I think this is important because it gives me an idea as to what is on the inside. It also gives me the chance to let my brain flow. Sometimes I start with one thought and end up with a completely different one with several other thoughts in the middle. Usually when I have struggled through the start of a piece I look at the word count and it says 155 or something. I immediately think that that’s nothing yet and I’m running out of words. What will I write about for 850 more words. I keep going and after awhile I check the word count again and it’s around 750 words. Now I’m thinking that I better get to the point and tie things up because I’m running out of words. But the words keep coming and I keep typing. When I’m finished tying things up I check the word count and it’s way over 1,000 words, so I read through and start cutting. I find other mistakes in spelling or grammar and quickly fix them. I take out repetition and unnecessary rambling until I’m really close but still over. That’s all I do. Then I post it to my blog and share it on my face book page. Now if I want to write something really good or even great, I would put a lot more time into it and choose words carefully and go over the outline in more detail. I would take longer with it, but since it is meant to be a sample of free flowing words I just let it be. Recently I found this paper with ideas for weekly writing to share on my blog. It is by: DIY Author. I printed it out and I really liked a few of the ideas. One is to serialize a whole story. That is a cool idea. Another one is to write micro fiction. Just little stand alone stories, 1,000 words. Most of their ideas were great. I like having a map for stuff. Sometimes it just helps. At first when I started my blog I was all about setting it up. I did it carefully, needing it to reflect me. Then it was ready and it was so clean and nice but completely empty. I wasn’t sure what to put in it because I didn’t want to mess it up. I want to encourage anyone who wants to write to just go for it. Start posting stuff. Start getting your words out there. Start a blog and write for it. Don’t worry about audience yet. Start publishing your words to your blog. It is great practice. It is best not to start off with a huge audience because that is a lot of pressure. Once you get the feeling that someone is reading what you wrote then you have to deal with that feeling. You will have that. You will be so grateful that someone actually took time to read all those words. The thing is you have just got to start. In three weeks I have changed from being a private writer to being a self-published author. You know you are considered published when you post to your blog. Strange how easy that was. It has nothing to do with money. It has only to do with your writing being where anyone can pick it up and read it. Some of the other things on this list are; sharing excerpts of work you are currently doing; telling the story behind the story, or revealing where you came up with the idea; Q&A with characters in your book or series; interview authors who write similar to you; share and review new books in the same category as yours; make lists of books similar to yours; invite your readers to ask questions and have Q&A time. The are more, it’s a pretty awesome list. I like the first one, ‘serialize a whole story - 1,000 words at a time’. I will still write 1,000 words a day but not always post them. Sometimes I will be rewriting and planning the next step in a story. I’m also working on a children’s book, illustrations and all. Sometimes you just have to do it. You wonder for years if you could, if you should, then one day you just have to go ahead and do it. Perhaps I’ll write a serialized story once a week, a micro fiction once a week or other kind of story and do a book review once a month. A book review will require a library trip on my part, which is something I would like to get back to doing. I would like to feature other writers from time to time but that will take time to figure out. These are some of the plans I have for my blog. Unlike most other venues in business, there is not much competition among writers. No two writers are exactly the same and there is always room for more. It’s the more the merrier in this field. What is important is the quality. One writer inspires another and in inspiring is inspiration. I have received emails from well-known authors encouraging me to write and keep writing until I break-out and then, keep writing.

Elizabeth Williams, daily writing exercise, 1,000 words exactly.

The Time is Now

I’ve spent a lot of time living in the past. Not living in the past as much as pining for the past. Pining for a past which didn’t exist. And it still doesn’t exist. It was never meant to exist. Gathering the things around me which connect me to a host of broken and un-lived dreams. There were things at the time which I wanted to do, to be, to have. Instead I was wrapping my heart and my arms around four broken-hearted little children. I was holding them tightly as I faced a world I knew very little about. I had been to some amazing places and had some fantastical experiences. But now I sat there all that forgotten and wondered how I will feed them, clothe them, educate them. All my dreams crushed by another human being. All their securities wiped out. I looked into their eyes and felt weak and small. But the protective parent in me stood up strong and bold. Oh being married to a manic man had it’s perks for sure. But when he’d seen enough of the world and experienced enough of family life, we were on our own. That was the beginning of disappointments. Living with a manic man, we were never really settled. I would no sooner put the pictures up on the walls and it would be time to move again. Not for armed services, not for ministry or business, but for experience. I held a British passport, that meant that we could access another country and live and work if we so chose. For the children’s father this meant adventure. Not planned but spur of the moment I really want to do this kind of adventure. “Let’s take the kids for a drive”, hence the beautiful weekend trip to North Scotland and the dear little Bed and Breakfast. A failed business meant a move back to the states and another failed attempt at business meant another move back to dear old England. When he walked out my first big question was: “Where are we going to live?” So that wasn’t the end that was the beginning. We ended up in a little blue house on a short street in a quaint town West of Columbus, Ohio. I didn’t have much experience with welfare services and the whole thing frightened me to death. I did have some experience with home making and I wanted to carry on with home-school but it became increasingly impractical. I wasn’t very good at getting my children to school on time and making sure everyone had something to wear and that it was clean. Then there were all the things which make up the life of someone who has kids in school. I couldn’t believe how much it cost to send kids to public school. Neither could I believe the teachers who would humiliate a child in front of the class because the mother hadn’t paid the fees. I don’t remember their being any fees or list of supplies when I went to school, but then I didn’t go to school in this country. I didn’t know you had to provide tissues to the school either. That was the dumbest thing I came across. It was straight on the supply list. I’m not exactly sure yet what the taxes and stuff get spent on. What’s next will be toilet paper on the list. Well a parent in my position with four school age children couldn’t afford to buy tissues for ourselves let alone for the school. It wasn’t one box of tissues per child it was four and they had to be a certain kind. The schools were spread out all over the town. Each child went to a different school because they had one school for the K-1 grades, another for 1-2 grades, another for 3-4 grades, one school way out in the country for grades 5 and 6. Then there were the Junior and High Schools. Each school expected you to pick your child up at 3:10 promptly. Each school acted like you had only one child. Getting the children enrolled into school each year was such an ordeal that I was completely exhausted for the whole month of September. What I really wanted to do was have a home where the children could do their schoolwork, I could bake and cook and clean to my hearts content, we could have field trips and shopping trips and look fabulous and I could spend my down time drawing pictures and writing books. The children would be safe on a few acres away from any town and any tissues we chose to buy would be ours and stay in our home. Yesterday, I was thinking about all the clutter around my house and the effort it has taken to get myself going again. How I have felt that I don’t really belong here and that my home isn’t really my home and how I have only begun to put the pictures up on the walls and that I was subconsciously wanting something, somewhere, that doesn’t really exist. I was thinking that this home I’m living in is actually everything I’ve ever wanted and that I really need to claim it. That the man I am now married to, who doesn’t want any more than what we have, who doesn’t want to see any other worlds, who is content to come home every single day. That this man deserves to come home to a house that is cared for and loved by me. One that is decked with pictures and draped in curtains and specked with cozy details. This man who stood beside me as we laid one of the children to rest, this man who held my hands and wept with me after we learned about her cancer. Who tills my garden year after year and wants me to stay home and be content with little and home-school our youngest. Who builds for me whatever my heart desires. Who eats every experiment of homemade foods I cook up. Who slaughters our year supply of fowl and tends daily to locking them safely up at night while they grow. Who has welcomed the older children into his life and home and cared for and supported them in their growing up and in their wild dreams. Then I realize that I have spent enough time in the past. The time for me now is the present. The time for me is now.

Elizabeth Williams, daily writing exercise, 1,093 words.