A "stay home" day

S calls weekends "stay home" days, but today I had to take one of those mid-week. I was feeling cold-y yesterday, and much worse this morning. I can't believe how much this fifths disease thing has beaten down our immune systems around here. I woke up only to call in sick at 6am, and then didn't wake again until 11. That left me only a little time to do nothing more daunting than balance my checkbook (where DOES the money go???) and clean out my purse - not as easy as you might think! - before running to the bank to keep the mortgage check from bouncing, and then getting the kids at school. R had a playdate here with one of the wilder boys in her class, and then I took the girls to his house (he has a 5 year old sister) to play while I went to a dr appointment. The appointment had nothing (on the face of it) to do with my cold: it was something scheduled last month with the same therapist I'd seen a couple of times. Talking with her has been so helpful, coming as it does during this time of re-evaluation of who I am and what I want to do with my life. All these changes I'm going through are very early mid-life, pre-perimenopausal, I know. But I also don't want to belittle this step in my journey by slapping a cultural or hormonal label on it.

But after the dr appointment, and after the stay at home, I feel so much better. Still, I'm sipping fizzy vitamin C drink as a write this, and tomorrow will undoubtedly come earlier than I want it to. Here's a poem that's 5 years old, written when R was S's age. I only tweaked a word or two while posting it here.



What Makes Creation Messy

We plant seeds in a riot of potting soil and peat pots.
My 5-year-old rips into packets, spills geneses:
snapdragon and cantaloupe, corn and beans.
Seeds for lavender and poppy, small as pill bug scat.

She bores holes with her pinky, thumb curving in the air,
I poke the earth with silent commands. To this one: germinate,
to that one: sprout. Grow and astound us, be bountiful, be green.
She writes the future with a laundry marker around the out-
side of the pots: CarrOt. PEPPEr. PumPkIN. BEaN.
CorN. PoPPy. CorN. BeaN.

Her fingers slip and leave hieroglyphs on the table, her hand.
They look like nicks, like the lines misused pruning shears make
on a slender apple tree branch.

The ecstasy of beginning behind us, now we'll mind the heat,
drip water to tempt the question-mark curves of green into straightening.
They're ours now, tiny things to tend or neglect at will.
She'll learn how apt seedlings are to shrivel if left alone.

Still in packets, the others are kept safe from either fate:
they await their turn to thrive or die
until the next time we give creation a go.