The Phoenix: Epicuriousmothering Rising

It's amazing how having a big old stressers changes everything.  Things you thought were super important seem so silly and things I took for granted seem so precious and important.  I feel like I've been blind, and now I see. I was listening to one of my friends talk about weight loss and how to get her extra five pounds off and how often she things about it.  I looked down at my belly and thought, I can't remember the last time I even thought about my body or my wrinkles or my sagging places.  With a whole new set of much more pressing worries, physical appearance has gone out the window.  Not completely, of course; I still want to be look my best, but my best has changed.  My best is smiling.  My best is a good day where I can easily smile and laugh.  My best is a daily prayer of gratitude that we've gone another day healthy and well. Today, that changed.  Finn's been complaining of a pain in his leg since May and for about a week, he walke...

  We are going on ten months of looking for a job.   Last September, after a rather horrid ten months, John got the boot.  It was oddly and rather unfairly done, but a great relief to all of us.  Working at that company had become a puzzle that grew harder and harder each day until it was in fact, impossible.  The stress of it took a wild toll on John's mental and physical health.  By the end, he was neither eating nor sleeping.  He had strange episodes of racing heart and an inability to tell what was real and what was imagined.  I sat him down and told him I would use up every penny of our retirement and sell the house if it meant he could stop working in that environment.  And it may take all that.  And I still won't regret it.   When I feel rather sorry for myself, I remember what life was like for him a year ago and then I don't feel sad that I am once again digging through my closet to find a new way to wear old thin...

  Just like this little bee getting getting all sorts of good pollen from this tiny flower, I'm fining courage all over the place . . .often in the most unlikely places  So one of my friends in my writing group sent me a little re-write of Jane Austin's Pride and Prejudice -- from Darcey's point of view.   She also sent the original chapter she was writing POV (point of view) off of so we could compare.  I thought I downloaded her chapter and happily began editing, marveling at how well she captured Jane Austin's voice.  But she had some places she could tighten and a few sentence that were confusing and needed to name the speaker or protagonist.  It wasn't until I was nearly done with the chapter that I discovered I had been editing the original.   I had been editing Jane Austin's  Pride and Prejudice . I sat back and laughed until my sides hurt and then got up and did a jig. You may wonder if I had lost my marbles?  The answer is proba...

It's been a year.   I'll sum it up by saying that food no longer tastes good to me.   The last time that happened, I had lost three pregnancies in a row and John had lost and found a job and we had moved three times. The feeling is very similar.   There have a been a lot of losses or near losses.  Enough that when the phone pings with a text or vibrates with a call (I long ago turned off the ringer), I take a deep breath and think, you can do this .  More times than not, I need that deep breath. I am probably in the second half of my life and I feel it.  47.  My children are nearly grown.  My house is established.  Our bank accounts don't fluctuate like they used to. I don't go to the store and dream of being able to buy things.  I walk into my closet and wonder what I can do without.   I feel the finality of my existence and I wonder . . . what do I really want out of all this?   For book club, we read A Millio...

Faith.  Publishing, starting a business, growing a garden . . .it takes a lot of hard work and FAITH The lyrics of that song have been running through my head all weekend and if you could see my face, I am living it.  What have I done?   I've done something I am not prepared for, I have little/no experience, and I have grave doubts about my ability to see it through . . . eek! Sounds like having a baby doesn't it?   But no, I did not do that.  My children are now doing that (and holy hannah, are they producing winners!). What I did was finally publish my Master's Thesis (that I defended seventeen years ago), in preparation for publishing the trilogy I've been working on for the last four years. It's my first baby and I loved it and I'm so proud of it-- The Confusing and Miraculous Life of Kate James .  And my other three?  Well they are three stand alone books about three different generations.  There's a little drama, a little mystery, ...

I have always said, “life and death” but never “death and life” until my mother died.  Now, I think of it in this order—death and life.   I did not want to be there when she died.  I thought it would be so hard and so painful and maybe too much for me to deal with.  But it wasn’t.  It was beautiful, sweet, and almost too easy.  One minute she was taking slow, breaths and the next . . .never came.  She slipped away from us but it didn’t even feel like she was gone.  Her shell, her body, wasn’t working, but her . . .my mother she was with us.  She was free from all the hard—and she’d had a hard life full of health challenges.  It felt joyful.  I know this cannot always be the case, but for her, I imagined her flying around us, young, healthy, strong, emotionally whole, and full of the truth that she had lived this amazing life and it was over and she didn’t have to hurt or worry or fear anymore. Of course we cried.  So so many te...

I have Hero every Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings from 8am-11.   I get to Henry and Chloe’s house to find Hero usually ready, dancing on her tip toes so excited to go with me.  She picks out a pair of vans (no matter what she’s wearing) that John bought her when she was three months old (they still don’t fit her) and she starts yelling, “Bye-bye Mama, bye-bye Baba (dad in Chinese), Bye-bye Zuzu, Bye-bye Fae-Fae (Alfie),” as she leaves—or on some days she needs to give everyone kisses—on their lips.  If the babies faces aren’t angled right she grabs their cheeks and moves them so she can literally suck the air out of their lungs.  I am a horrible grandmother because it makes me laugh my head off! Then we drive up to my house with Hero reciting all the people who live in our house over and over again.  When we get home (these days without anyone there—she is VERY disappointed that Finn and PIper aren’t there) we have snacks, dance to Selena Gomez and Black P...

  My often daily life . . . (John is two feet away—I can’t do all of them by myself) Last week, every single time I sat down, I almost instantly fell asleep.  I kept telling John, I have the sleeping disease.  What is going on?  Am I getting old?  Is it the covid after effects?  What on earth? He didn’t have any answers for me because he was doing the same thing.   We didn’t really do anything for seven days straights.   And our kids joined us in the sleepy, do nothing, lazy slug bug state. It wasn’t until this morning as I was looking over the pictures of the summer that I realized why. . . We literally haven’t stopped ALL summer long—one awesome amazing trip/visit/fun after the other.  It’s like we are making up for last years “staycations.”  Holy hannah have we ever made up for it.  Just about did ourselves in playing and hugging and kissing and caring for babies. Highlights of the summer (in no particular order): Cousin sleepove...

  I’ve been writing again.  Writing as in writing novels.  It’s both magical and terrifying.  I’m not exactly sure why this is but I think with anything that you love there is the potential of both healing you or breaking you.  It’s the risk of caring and hoping. Last night as I was brushing my teeth and dealing with a very upset stomach, I thought about all the things you don’t write about in your stories.  Upset stomachs and the results of them being one.  Or brushing your teeth or going to the bathroom or burning breath or blisters or BO or a million other unpleasant things.  But in reality those uncomfortable, messy, ugly, smelly parts are what make up a good portion of our lives.  Why don’t we write about them?  I mean, no one wants to read about a good bout of diarrhea do they?   Or do we?   Maybe we do.  I mean, not the nitty gritty details, but maybe we want to know we aren’t alone in our imperfections.  That ...

 There are heavy clouds hanging low in the sky making the green of the trees and grass, what green grass their is, greener.  The air is thick with humidity and each inhale of moisture rich oxygen hydrates me without ever drinking a drop. It is, in short, a miracle. This is the third year of horrible drought, after five years of much lower than average rain fall.  Last summer, there was no monsoon season.  There were no clouds, just endless days of clear skies and searing heat.  I prayed then for rain, but it was an afterthought.  I knew, I believed, that this dry spell could not hold, but it did through the summer.  And then the fall.  And winter arrived without snow to ski even at the highest resorts.  Spring came with days upon days of beautiful unusually warm days and nights without the dark, rainy, cold days that fill up the mountains and streams.  Summer arrived with searing, dry, leaf curling heat . . .and this year, I prayed in a ...

 My Chinese grandma name is Nai Nai.  It means Milk Milk or Boob Boob (Henry likes that one).  It’s my favorite name I’ve ever been called. Henry. My oldest.   Our surprise baby who came four years before we planned. When we discovered he was coming, we made a total change of plans—Law school for John and a more creative English degree for me.  I thought he’d slow us down or crimp our style, and in some ways, he might have, but mostly, he made us brave.  He made us passionate about him and our little family unit.  He taught us how to be self-less and patient (oh boy did we ever need that), and how beautiful and wonderful the world was. We almost lost him when he was two and a half.  I heard his heart stop beating and a hundred doctors rushed in, pushing us out of the room, yelling words no parents want to hear. But he’s a fierce little fighter and was running around, up to his wild mischief before I recovered let along he recovered.  Again an...