Today is eight months from the day that Annie came wailing into the world—into that hospital room, into unrestrained gravity, into air, into my arms. Her eight month life has been the fastest eternity. I’ve never lived a day without her, it feels, and yet, I’ve just barely gotten my turn with her soul. 

She is an old soul. I see eons in her eyes and in the way she tenses and squeals and forces her little hands and feet, locked knees, into the world like she knows this place. Annie is here and she wants to embrace all life’s goodness. Oh, embrace it Annie! Embrace it all. And show me how to do the same.

The week Annie was born the daffodils came out in our backyard. I told everyone that my baby girl would bring Spring—and she did, nine days past her due date. The night before she was born, we celebrated nephew Clark's third birthday. I felt huge and tired and anxious. I sat against the kitchen fireplace in the family kitchen watching Clark fend off older-brother Joshua’s present-unwrapping help and I kept thinking about the little life inside of me, a life that would soon celebrate a birth day, and someday a third birthday and a thirtieth. 

Life is divine and miraculous—how else can you explain the indescribable beauty of an old soul inside a new body of small limbs that grows to be the leaps and laughs of a toddler, grows to be the love of a mother?

We're both making something that lasts.  

 -- That's what he said to me when I was dwelling on our vastly different career paths and he instead saw infinite similarity. 

The cursor in this text box blinked for a good long while before I started typing this sentence. Of late, I've been dragging myself to my blog space-- wanting to write but having nothing to say,  thinking that I might not have anything worth saying to add to this blog, this internet, this world. Gosh, I hope not.

I  get in this funk sometimes-- you'd think I would abandon the blog. But alas, I cannot. And so here I am, saying something that's really nothing about nothing just because I don't want the blog to die. It's hilarious that even though it's writing that I'm studying day-by-day, I stare at that blinking cursor and with its pulse it swipes everything worth saying out of my brain.

And so, I leave you with tonight's dinner. Zuppa Toscana and Whole Wheat Oatmeal Bread.

   

Hi, I'm Laura. I'm a wanna-be chef. I'm a writer. I'm a student.

I'm a Mormon.

So grateful you were born. What would I do without you?

Of late, I've found myself feeling discouraged in the face of assignments that I never complete, class readings that I never do, essays that I want to write but never begin. I've wondered what I am doing instead with my time. I had begun to think that I must be wasting hours of my life away doing nothing.

Yet, in the last week or so, I've realized that if I am, in fact, wasting time, then it's wasted time that matters. I want to waste my time talking with the loves of my life-- a husband, sisters, nieces & nephews, brothers, friends. I want to waste time dicing butternut squash. I want to waste time cuddling in a movie, painting a wall, walking instead of driving. I want to waste time writing unimportant emails and pinning a darling skirt to Pinterest. And perhaps, if I have leftover hours after wasting my time, I'll do a bit of homework, but only as it fits into my larger goals of learning to write and teach well.

I've realized that I want to foster a certain level of un-busy-ness that leaves me free to set aside rigidity and schedule and assignments for lingering, for soup, for gratitude, for a rich life, for the chance to list my blessings and realize, suddenly, that my life is full of the things that I want it to be full of-- family, food, reading, a bit of writing, a whole lot of loving, and a relationship with God that is all-too-often derailed by tired eyes.

I'm grateful for my life that is filled, overflowing, abundant, rich. For the countertop in my kitchen that is stacked with apples, onions, half a cookie, and a quarter of apple pie. For my email inbox brimming with good people, recipes, writing opportunities, and a bit of homework. For a hybrid sketchbook/calendar that is dotted not with sketches, but with lists that I am always reordering as I navigate days. For people who packed into our kitchen on Sunday night for pie and a game of Ticket to Ride; I wish they'd lingered longer. I always do.

I'm pretty sure today is a beautiful day. It's still morning, so it's not quite deep enough into the day to tell, but I think it will be. And I don't mean beautiful as in sunny and warm and refreshing with a slight breeze. I'm not talking about the weather. I think today is going to be beautiful for all its mundane moments. Today's little things-- books to read, places to go, food to eat-- have started to gather and it's gonna be good. I can tell.

In class today, a student challenged how people create meaning out of commonplace things. He noted that as people draw substance and salvation from their simplest experiences, they are creating false depth, contriving substance from its opposite, forcing consequence and fate and beauty and God. These people, characters, authors, or otherwise are all too earnest in their disingenuous need for depth, he says.

And you know what, to heck with all of that, I want to create meaning and substance and depth from nothing. I want to do it everyday. I want to live my life looking for redemption in a sprinkler and transcendence in the steam rising from a pot of boiling water. I want to look for God in the rain that is just about to drop from the heavy clouds at this very moment.

So maybe I am talking about the weather.