Ring the Bells

I would say that the family can pretty much count on Kjersti’s making a blog entry every day. Every morning when I come to work, fire up the computer and check the family blogs, I can bet that there will be something new from Kjersti. Chelsee and Danae are quite regular writers, too. Even Allison, with all she is doing currently, writes fairly frequently. So, I think, “What is wrong with me?”

It is not that absolutely nothing happens in my life. Just last week we got new carpet in a bedroom downstairs and on the stairs themselves; we got our poor, sad plantation shutters repaired so they look perfect now; we got new ceilings in the kids’ bathroom and the family room downstairs; and we got various drywall repairs done throughout the house, including the crumbling wall in the master bathroom. It feels really good to have those things fixed. There is still a lot of painting to be done and much junk to be gone through, thrown away and organized. But many of the major things that I wanted to fix in my house have now been fixed.

Things happen at work, too. Last week, I was moved from my nice spot by a huge window in the engineering department into a corner at the end of our lunch/meeting room upstairs. You guessed it: There are no windows. My boss’s current desk is what we had been using to set our coffee pot on in the engineering section. My own desk has been put together from various parts of various desks that could be scrounged from storage. I tell people who seem surprised to see us where we are that we had to make room for the important people in the company. Sarcastic? Oh, yes.

I read about Kameryn and Isaac and see many pictures of them, and I feel guilty that I didn’t do more to capture those same kinds of moments when you all were little. I was really overwhelmed with motherhood and there wasn’t an internet or a digital camera in a cell phone to make it any easier for me. I do hope you all know that I loved each one of you just as much as Kjersti loves Kameryn and Danae loves Isaac. I was just as awed at the wonder of each of you as you grew, and just as proud of everything each of you learned. That is why, when there is a flood in the basement and my boxes of stuff get wet, I still can’t part with Kjersti’s President Awards or Wesley’s grades from Junior High. You would have seen pages of stuff lying around the room so they could dry and then be put back into another box. I keep thinking maybe I can throw them away next time.

Anyway, as I read Kjersti’s process of planning what she will write, by noticing what she thinks about and what she does, I think, “I could do that.” Goodness knows, I do think about things. So I will try to write more often. I know I have said that before, but I will still try to write more often.

Here is a poem I found when I was going through my wet treasures last week-end:

Ring the bells you still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything.
That’s how the light gets in.