Dear Ones,  it’s been five years!!  What happened??

One month after my new site was up and i had put up the first post, LIFE happened.  Family CALLED.  Thunderously.  And my life changed completely.

First of all, our daughter announced that she and her husband were having twins!! (In Maine, two states away!!) Would i please come and help??  Being hugely maternal, i could NOT have said “no”.  Thus began what has become five years of childhood- immersion!!  Exhausting and endlessly entertaining, these little fireballs are my heart’s delight!!

Though i was deeply glad to be able to be in sacred service to the beloved one whom I had birthed and raised and encouraged all these years…i was also suddenly uprooted and missing my usual ground of being in Vermont, the platform of my life and marriage, ministry and teaching. During the intense months of the twins’ first summer, I saw the ocean exactly two times, though I could hear it a mile or two away from my bedroom window at night. I forgot to meditate, I forgot to go outside, I saw no friends… needless to say, my batteries ran down.  I returned to the arms of my dear husband, and rested for the winter…

The next Spring,  the sister who had been living with our 88 year old mother for years suddenly threw the ball to me and moved to Florida. I had been traveling between Maine and Vermont, but suddenly,  I needed to be in residence in Maine with Mom. Very synchronistically, my daughter, her husband, and their darling little ones live 10 minutes down the road,  so the writing on the wall read: MOVE TO MAINE.  So clear.  And yet… so far away –  far from the land we loved in Vermont, our community, our friends, our work.  Vermont: the golden setting of our 15 happiest years and greatest fulfillment imaginable — how could we blithely leave??  It was heart-wrenching.  But, once in Maine, it was simultaneously heart-fulfilling and profoundly right to be serving a need in my own family.  My soul was taking care of me, even if i tended to forget; guess what — Mom lived on the ocean!!  Walking her dog on the beach every day became my meditation, my chapel, my worship, my relief… Walking my mother Home became my sacred privilege.  We did puzzles, we got ice-cream cones, we talked and talked. I learned so much.  It was a joyous and confusing time, intimate and complex, ripe with love, rotten with death.  She left us suddenly one night and the hard part of grieving began… and lasted…..

But Now, the twins turn five this week!! Our new home is filled with Hello Kitties and jellybeans, dolls and puzzles, crayons and dress-ups…. it’s been a cascade of blessing upon blessing witnessing the miracle of growing kids, the magic of identical twins, sitting both on my lap…learning to draw, learning to read, blowing Bubble Towns on the deck, feeding the chickens, chalking Holi colors all over the Buddha and Mother Mary statues on the terrace… so many sweet memories, aching limbs, and chocolate chip cookies!!

Where have I been??  Immersed in life.  In death.  In joy.  In sorrow.  In mundane everyday miracles.  How amazing!!  (“After enlightenment, the laundry.”)

I’m back, With All My Heart,  Jennifer