My husband stumbles through wearing 10-year-old sleeping shorts and a pilled tee, boldly lettered with "mega van family fun" alongside a HUGE minivan print. Trailing behind him is a sleepy mushy-haired 4yo , a 2yo grumbling for "bottie milk" and a went-to-bed-in-my-school-clothes 7yo , who is dressed for the day, although somewhat rumpled. Everyone had overslept, our two big girls are, in fact, still sleeping. ....and it is admittedly all my fault. I had woken up at the crack of dawn and crept out of bed to write. The stillness had been so tangible, the soft sleepy noises so lulling .... That instead of waking them all up at our usual mad-rush-get-ready-for-school deadline time , I had paused and decided on a whim to cancel the day. Today is going to be schedule-free. No school, no errands, no agenda. I shoo the sleepy-heads back to bed, no protests from a single one. I'm planning to crawl back under the covers myself and enjoy the l
Six months ago, my eldest daughter lost a best friend , her cat, Vader. Having recently known and tasted the depths of grief myself, and knowing my daughter as I do, I tried to help her process it. We camped out in her bedroom, just the two of us, and waited it out. At first, I just held her through her first heart-wrenching wails. I held her tighter as her tears became words, and we talked and we snuggled, and we remembered, .... and eventually we smiled again at all the stories that came flooding back to form the threads that wove the fabric of his life with us . We celebrated who he was for the time that he was with us , and slowly my daughter began to grasp t he concept of loss. It always hurts , it stings... Sometimes it can hurt so much that we forget to breathe , and it feels as though we will never again know the simplicity of happiness and just being again. But the waves of pain washing over us do begin to settle, and it is then that