Practice makes perfect

The first thing is the wind. The lake is choppy and white capped. The pines sway in a menacing dance. The elegant row of flowering trees along the north side of the parking lot contort painfully, a row of brides with their veils blown over their heads.

The second thing is the sun. Light so intense and rich and bright that the world is a slide under a microscope. I can see each petal on the flowering trees twenty feet away. Each blade of grass has its own shadow. There are a million greens. Too many shades for Ralph Lauren to name. Evergreen. Nantucket green. Hillside. Sun dappled pine. Shadow green. Grass green. New bud green. The sun emits energy with little warmth unless you can hide from the answering wind.

I do. I hide in the van and watch Matt disappear up the hill and into the trees, the baby on his back. Three kids stretch out behind him and in front of him. The dog, on a red leash, lopes along at his feet. I can't hear them now, over the wind, but I squint into the glare and imagine.

"A rock!" That is Quinn, our little collector, bent over in raptures of discovery.

"This is where we saw a snake when I was three." Garrett, one finger raised, as careful and precise as four-year-olds come.

"I'm the leader! Can't catch me." Saige, looser, fiercer, always a competitor, always in a race of her own making.

I don't feel well. My throat hurts and my head pounds and my nose drips and so I have stolen this moment. I helped with preparations and packing and I rode out here, across the border into tall pine country, nursing a chai and doling out snacks, on the promise that I could stay in the van, sheltered and warm, and try to bake the nastiness from my head. Inside the van, it is sleepy-warm and muffled-wind quiet. I revel in the chance to watch my husband and my children hike up the side of the hump of land jutting out into Lake Coeur D'Alene and disappear into the tall wind blown pines while I practice.

I practice the capture of a moment in time on paper. I practice letting them walk away. I practice who I am, settle my heart against what is difficult in my life and resolve to do better. I practice acknowledging that every day I do some things really well.

I practice caring and not caring in equal measure. I care and I want no one to be hurt because I am careless. I don't care in that I won't take another's perceptions or misconceptions onto me and make them who I am.

I practice free flow writing. Can you tell? I long for and dread both that moment when they burst from the trees. First tiny under the needled giants, than larger. Running. Their voices emerging from the wind.

"I'm hungry! I'm thirsty! I fell. We saw a hawk. We hunted bears. Hampton ate a dead frog."

Beautiful. Difficult. Time-consuming. Joyful. Loved. Loving. Energetic. Needy. Children.

"How do they have the time?" Matt asked me in the parking lot of Starbucks this morning before we merge onto the highway. "Look at them all." The coffee shop was full. Jammed to the gills with people sipping, talking , reading, thinking.

"How do they have a whole Saturday morning? Where are their four kids and a dog?"

We lived like that once upon a time. On the ocean in a humid apartment, we sipped coffee and wasted five years worth of Saturday mornings. We had no idea what we had, except in retrospect. Lucky people.

Here they are, the little parade that is my life. Saige runs under the bride trees, still, always, in the lead. Garrett, skinny and vulnerable, his black hood up around his round, open face. Quinn, bare-headed, bold, he is not one troubled by the elements. Nate rides on Matt's back, the most content baby, a slight pucker on his forehead the only indication of worry, his cheeks chapped red by the wind. The black and white dog stays by Matt's side, a hopeful eye on his pocket.

They reach the side of the van and I open the door to a rush of wind and voices. Ruffling my hair, ruffling my heart.

Every day is the real thing. There isn't any practice.