The other day I picked up some preschool children for an art class, and as we walked down the hall I noticed a little boy trying hard not to cry.  Since I can’t resist a child trying not to cry, I bent down and asked what was wrong. He held up the tiniest piece of construction paper that he was holding in both hands like a diamond and said that he was about to put it into a box for his mommy, but now he couldn’t. We turned right around and went back to his classroom to find the paper box maker himself, and without hesitation Mr. Troy gently placed that important bit of scrap paper inside one of his beautiful creations.  As the kid turned around to join me, he gave an enormous sigh of relief as if he’d just narrowly escaped a car crash.  Or watched someone he loved narrowly escape a car crash.

I think this may be what we look like to God when we freak out over something and then someone helps us.  It must just break his heart.

Speaking of heartbreaking boys, Huck has decided he wants to make more money and open up a bank account, so we’ve been adding chores to his very easy life so he can earn 25 cents here and there in addition to his $2 weekly allowance that I usually forget to give him. Huck loves algebra and fractions and the Fibonacci Sequence and will one day be an astrophysicist/mathematician/inventor, but we get to say we knew him back when he was excited for $2.75.  And like the four year old with the paper box, my homemade birthday card contains his newly designed logo (see above) made with a protractor, compass, Sharpie maker and highlighter, to be forever cherished with his other creations.

I turned 45 years old today.  Anne Lamott turned 61 a few days ago and says she thought she was still 47.  So I am two years away from being the age Anne Lamott thinks she is and that’s a comfort.  Still, I thought at the very most I was 32. Possibly 27.  So I kept it simple today.  Basking in the backyard sunshine, visiting waterfalls and making cairns, reading my book, strawberry cheesecake made by Troy and Huck, wine with friends, gratitude out the wa-zoo, and hoping for exactly 45 more such years.