Inspired by a birthday and a beach read
Today, as you may have remembered, is N’s birthday.
Our precious cherished girl is 17 and we are all at a loss to discover how that happened. Not just me and M but all the people who have watched her grow up— our family and all of our friends. Many people have commented to me about how fast it has all gone.
As I do on many of my girls’ birthdays, I started my day by looking back on her birth story. It’s an anniversary for me too, I figure, and worth taking some time to reflect upon.
I was actually shocked by some of the details that had left my brain about her birth, even in the few years since I have gone back to re-read the story here on the blog. Can you imagine how much more of those details I would have now forgotten, had I not taken the time to write it all down? 17 years is, in fact, quite a long time, despite the feeling of its having flown.
And so comes the inspiration— to come back to regular blogging— this medium that I love so much for so many reasons, but the main reason I am inspired is not for myself right now, but simply for the sake of remembering all of the small and beautiful moments and milestones that are so easily forgotten with the passage of time (unless they get written down).
But then there’s my beach read.
I picked it up a year or two ago after reading and loving Caroline. I started it during a very busy time and wasn’t able to finish it, so I came back to it this summer. It's definitely not a fluffy beach read; in fact, it has brought me to tears several times already, telling the story from Marmee's perspective with a profound and deep understanding of motherhood and all its complexities, joys and sadness. It doesn't help that all the personalities of my girls seem to match the four girls of Little Women so perfectly, in the same birth order, and I also feel Marmee to be a bit of a kindred spirit for me as well, it's as if the story could have been written about us. I have never felt so seen by a fictional character and I actually feel I have learned some parenting lessons by reading this book.
The book is written in journal format, entries written by Marmee with commentary on the events of Little Women. Talk about strongly identifying-- before I had my blog "journal", I filled at least one journal per year. It's a habit I have fallen out of. You all have heard me bemoan being so busy here on the blog. It's tempting to say "let's bring back the 'hour of power'-- I need to spend at least a half hour a day journaling/blogging". But there are so many other things that I could fill an hour with each morning— cleaning, gardening, food prep for the family, working out, reading, meditating, stretching, practicing music-- I would need like six hours of power before every day to really feel like I was on top of my life. Even without working full time, these things fill not just my mornings but my days and nights as well and keep me away from regular writing.
However… what better way to spend the rest of my summer than to set a little challenge for myself? What if I did set a goal of blogging for 30 minutes a day during the month of August? Not a post every day, necessarily, but just doing some kind of writing/journaling for 30 minutes each day.
It's written down here, so I guess it's happening! I'm really looking forward to it, actually :)
So... maybe I'll talk to you soon about some of the parenting lessons I've learned from Marmee, but for now I'll just post a few pictures of lately before getting a few things ready for N's birthday celebration tonight!
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