Rhena Writes

Tag: family

  • Keeping the home fires burning

    The deal around this house is that if the temperatures go into the fifties or above, we don’t have a fire in the wood stove. Sadly, today is one such day. I’m still sitting next to the stove even though it’s little more than an empty metal box right now because it’s still a comfy spot, just not quite as cozy as it is when there’s a hot glow emanated from the box.

    The fire is one of the ways that I get myself through the winter, especially in these fewer and fewer minutes of sunlight each day. I know. In this day and age, what’s the problem? We have plenty of indoor electric lighting and, yes, I do turn on many lights during the dark evenings, but somehow the glow of the fire just heals me right up. It sparks something primal and constant in me. It serves as a reminder that my ancestors made it through winters with little more than such a fire.

    The fire is also deeply satisfying because it’s something that I have to build and tend to: splitting kindling, carrying in wood from the stacks outside, making the fire starters. I couldn’t explain how to take care of the fire to someone else, it’s just becoming the second nature that arrives only with much attention and experimentation. Knowing what piece of wood needs to go on next, whether the damper needs to be opened or the embers merely stirred up. Yes, the smoke alarm went off as recently as the last week when I wasn’t being attentive enough but even those moments are becoming fewer and further between. There’s even work for the kids: stacking wood, unloading it, checking the moisture levels. And it’s particularly satisfying when one of them curls up for a nap on the nearby couch, stands in front of the box to warm his hands, or just stares into the flames. Yes, much of the time, they’d still choose looking at a screen (they are human children, after all) but I know that at least having the option of resting their eyes on the fire through the winter months kindles something in their imaginations. I’m guess anyway. And I’m projecting. I know that glow of the fire does something that no screen can do.

    Last week, we heard a strange noise which inspired me to call the company that installed and maintains our wood stove. I call it a company, but it’s a guy and a few employees. Anyway, it turns out that the owner has the same stove model that we have. So on the phone, he was leading me through some options of what the noise might have been and then told me how to remove a part of our pipe in order to take some pictures. Once I sent him the pictures, he said we could go ahead and start having fires again as everything was in working order.

    But two things happened in the course of that morning. The first was that I was able to get the pictures he needed. It feels quite good to be able to take care of things around my own house. The other thing that felt nice was just to have a chat with someone knowledgeable about these sorts of things. We swapped a few stories about our wood stoves and it was just, well, pleasant.

    I know that maybe that doesn’t sound like much, but I’m a stay at home mom. Many of my days, most of my social interaction is with my husband and kids. And while I do actually love my alone time and wouldn’t have it other way, that’s not to say that I don’t enjoy the occasional chat especially one that is about something else I enjoy. Namely: owning, using, and learning about this wood stove.

    I feel competent (in fire building, in home owning, in creating a homey atmosphere for my kids). I feel connected (to both ancestors and other people who are excited about things like wood stoves). I feel cozy and even creative. I get to use my body to build fires but I also use my brain.

    This post is not some sort of an advertisement for wood stoves (even the high efficiency ones like ours). What I’m trying to do here is to examine the things that bring me joy, to break them apart into their component parts so that I might more clearly feel that joy not just when I’m sitting in front of my wood stove. But in every moment. In every breath.

  • It was only an inch or two of snow.

    We had a little bit of snow the other day. I really needed to watch my kid filled up with joy so the timing was perfect. As we stepped into a little forested area walking up to his school, I could feel and hear all the stress exit his little body. The quiet and calm of the snow just pulled it all right out of him.

    On the walk back, I had to focus so completely on what my body was doing in order to not slip that there was not room in my brain for anxiety. I was reminded of the rainy season when I lived in Karenni Refugee Camp #3 in Mae Hong Son, Thailand. The dirt paths would all become slippery and my nordic flatlander body wasn’t built for even these slight hills. I’d have to focus completely on each step in order to not slide down the clay-like dirt. But it’s a practice in embodiment that I’ve learned to appreciate. I was turned into the very soles of my feet to guarantee each step was sure.

    This type of hyper-focus on my body, alongside gratitude, and being immersed into this little patch of nature create a castle wall against anxiety. The gratitude comes easy right now: I need only look backwards a little. This time last year, I was still weak from chemotherapy and I still had surgery and (unbeknownst to me at the time) radiation ahead of me. So these sorts of walks, especially in the snow, were much harder. And the knowns that I was facing in my future were much scarier than this year. The trickier, unpaved bits of this walk are lined with trees which make for nice sturdy bodies to lean against when I do need a rest. It’s a welcome reminder that Mother Earth is always holding me.

    Last week, I cried when I walked into a nearby stand of trees and realized that at least four or five of them had been cut down. The tears came faster than the emotions. The thing is that I knew that this was going to happen. The county has been making plans for redesigning that area for years and I’d seen the telltale neon pink spray paint on the tree trunks the week before. Still, I felt their absence right in my chest. And at first, when I started crying, I felt so silly and a little ashamed: here I am a full grown woman, a mother, weeping over trees that I knew were going to have to be removed to move room for something else. I tried to explain it away at first: oh, I’m just tired or hormonal. But then I realized that I was just sad because the trees were gone and dead now. And that’s sad. And it’s ok to be sad about that.

    It was only an inch or two of snow and it didn’t even stick to the streets. But it’s these subtle shifts and changes that can make all the difference.

  • How Will They Know I Love Them?

    This is the story of how I struggle with saying no to my kids. And also the story of how I struggle to say yes to my kids. And also of how I struggle to say yes to myself. And so therefore perhaps it’s about how I struggle to say no to myself. I guess maybe I could therefore say that it’s about how I struggle with decisions. And maybe that means that I struggle — and usually fail — to recognize the abundance that has been gifted to me.

    It begins with a corn dog. It was the weekend. My daughter wanted one. What she really wanted was to go to one of her favorite restaurants to get a corn dog and a bubble tea. But she never told me this directly, she just kind of hinted around it. I would like to say that I have a strong “mother’s intuition” and that I pay attention so closely to my kids needs and wants that they never have to express them: I just know. But that’s not what’s going on here. At first, I thought that my kids don’t always ask for what they want directly because they don’t like to hear “no.” But I’m starting to realize that my kids sense that I struggle to say “no” to them. They don’t like to see that struggle and so they edit themselves before it even gets to the whole asking directly for their wants and needs. They kind of “test the waters” with hints and indirect comments. It’s not to save themselves from hearing a no. It’s to save them from having to watch me flounder and go back and forth and try to make a decision.

    So I knew that she wanted to go get a corn dog. (Honestly, she’d probably want to get a corn dog every chance she got so this wasn’t any sort of revelation.) And I went back and forth inside my own head on whether or not I wanted to take her to get one. It would take a while, a chunk from their day off from school. But it’s always nice to have these types of trips with her or, really, any of my kids. Corn dogs aren’t the healthiest option, on the one hand. On the other, part of me really does believe in a sort of “do what you enjoy” attitude. We didn’t really have a set lunch at home so why not go out and get something? But, then again, I also had things I wanted to do and enjoy at home. And she had never really asked directly to go. I’d like to think that if there’s one lesson that I’m trying to instill in my kids, it’s to ask directly for what they want from me. And here I was trying to come up with an answer to a request that she hadn’t even made yet.

    And here’s the real crux of the struggle, “If I don’t anticipate and meet their every hearts desire, how will they know that I love them?”

    So I was in this internal state of debate, letting all of these back and forths slowly eat up my morning. Finally, she asked me, directly, “Mom, do you like the corn dog restaurant?”

    It was the first direct question she’d asked all morning about lunch and it wasn’t at all the question I’d been planning for.

    “Well,” I explained to her. “I like corndogs, but they aren’t the healthiest option for me and I’m trying to focus on eating in a healthier way these days.”

    And that was it. She didn’t mention the corndog restaurant again the rest of the day to me. She asked me to help her with cutting celery and onion so she could make herself a tuna melt, which she seemed perfectly satisfied with. And we had a perfectly nice time at home. We’d played volleyball together in the morning. Later, she came to me and asked if I’d play with her again. I was in the middle of writing a poem so I told her, “no.” She tried to convince me a little more but I stuck to my commitment to my writing.

    Of course, it wasn’t easy to say “no” to her. She wanted to do something perfectly wholesome with me, her mother outside on a lovely day. And, of course, in the back of my head, there’s always the thought, “one day my kids will move out and be on their own and I won’t have a chance to play volleyball on a beautiful fall day with them.”

    Later, I found out that she took that time to clean her room.

    And I realized that my always giving more of my time, my attention, my energy every time they ask for it isn’t helping them. I realized how much they are really, truly watching everything I do and soaking it all up. When I say, “no” to them, often it forces them to figure out a way to say, “yes” to themselves, to improving their environment, to taking care of themselves and their health. I had been modeling self-love all along and didn’t even realize it. But she had seen it. And now she could practice it for herself.

    “If I don’t anticipate and fulfill their every want and need, how will they know I love them?” They will know I love them because they see how I love myself. They know I love them because I do.

  • Summer break begins

    It feels like this is the first day of summer break even though the kids have been off for school for a couple of days and even though summer doesn’t officially begin until tomorrow. I think it’s because my husband is off of work today. And this time last year, I was dealing with a new cancer diagnosis. I was so consumed by all of the appointments and details, getting through each day, I was barely aware of the seasons changing. It was a hard time.

    This summer, I’ve been able to look a little bit further forward, planning outings, swimming, taking advantage of farmer’s markets and other simple things that I completely missed last year. I started to try to plan today with my kids, going out to a museum. I was surprised that it was the kids who put the kibosh on that plan. They wanted to laze around a bit, read and maybe go up to swim at the neighborhood pool, enjoy what their own house and backyard have to offer. I realize now that part of me was feeling so guilty about all that I couldn’t do with them last summer and I was kicking off this summer by trying to compensate. As always, I over shot. Thankfully, my kids pulled me back.

    In myriad subtle ways and just in their being, they remind me that we can all be content with what’s right in front of us. We have already been given so much, there’s no need to keep striving for more beyond that.

    So instead of hoping on the metro somewhere else, my son and I made oatmeal raisin cookies. When he was first in kindergarten, I used to make them about once a week. He loved these cookies. It was such a simple pleasure and he acted as if he was starving in the desert and these were actual mana. Today is the first time he’s actually made them with me. I’m shocked by how capable he is, and how much he seems to enjoy my company. And I didn’t need to go even outside of my front door for these experiences and lessons.

  • My favorite season is the one I’m in.

    Daily writing prompt
    What is your favorite season of year? Why?
    View all responses

    So, right now, that means spring is my favorite season. In Maryland it already feels a bit more like summer, hot and humid, the constant threat of thunderstorms, even though we are still ten days or so away from the summer solstice. The minutes of sunlight are still piling up on each side of the day. School is still in session, but the community pools are open. It would be easy for me to get caught up in either looking forward towards summer break or backwards to the cooler days of spring during this time of transition. But I’m putting a great deal of effort into being in the season I’m in — weatherwise and otherwise.

    I learned a lesson about this just yesterday in my guitar lesson. I’ve been working the same piece of music for a while now — maybe as long as two or three months? — I’m not really sure. In any case, it’s been a challenging piece and the last few lessons, my teacher has worked with me with the same few trouble spots for a few weeks now. At the end of the lesson, she’s sent me off with some thoughts on how to work on those few measures. So at each practice, I will follow her suggestions and work on those few measures, practicing them over and over. And there certainly has been some improvement.

    And yesterday she called me out. “You’ve been working on these other parts of the piece, haven’t you?” indicating the lines and measures that we hadn’t started working on during my lessons yet.

    I laughed and wondered, “How did she know?“

    I confessed that I had been. She also teaches my daughter and she told me that I’m just like her. There’s probably some truth to that. But when I talked to my daughter about it, she said that she has some favorite parts to pieces of music that she just really enjoys playing and so she plays those parts over and over.

    That’s not what’s going on for me.

    As I explained to my guitar teacher, I have it in my head that there’s some sort of deadline or like a “test” at the end and I start to get worried that I’m not going to have covered or practiced that part of the piece.

    I know. There is no deadline. And that’s also exactly what I said to my teacher. “You’re type A,” she said.

    We both had a bit of a laugh over the whole thing. The whole thing forced to me to examine and articulate some of these ridiculous thoughts and ideas that underlie how I’ve been approaching practicing guitar. And it also made me realize that I present as a Type A personality. And I realize that this is a survival/ defense mechanism that I built up in school and probably in life in general. It’s that I always feel like if I’m not three steps ahead, then I’m three steps behind and slipping even faster.

    But in my heart of hearts, that’s not who I really am. It’s just how I’ve been presenting myself. It’s a coping strategy. I practiced those other sections of the music because I was worried I’d somehow be called upon to know the whole piece and I wouldn’t be prepared.

    All of this for an activity that I’m partaking in supposedly “for fun.”

    In the meantime, the few measures that my teacher suggested I practice aren’t really getting that much better. And the whole thing isn’t really that much fun. Or, at least, it’s definitely not as much fun as it could be if I just trusted the process. Just focus on the parts that my teacher told me to. No need to be a super student, to know the whole thing ahead of the class (by the way, there is no class, these are private lessons). I’ve been cramming all of the music into each week, each practice. And in this way of thinking, I’ve ended up not really knowing any of the music that well. I haven’t been giving each line, each measure, each note its space and time.

    I’d like to be able to tell you that since this lesson and commensurate change in attitude, I’ve picked up the guitar and the whole thing has come together. That’s not true. This isn’t some neat little lesson with a change of attitude and a happy reward at the end. In fact, I haven’t even picked up the guitar since yesterday’s lesson. In part because that’s part of the lesson too. I’m doing all of this for fun so I don’t need to practice just to “prove” something to myself. And I also don’t need to “over practice”. I practice once a day for thirty to forty-five minutes. When I’m done, I’m done, I move on to something else. I don’t fixate and obsess and try to perfect it all.

    So what does this have to do with my favorite season?

    Like I said, my favorite season is the one I’m in. And being able to say that means that I don’t spend a lot of time looking forwards or looking backwards at the other seasons, which will inevitably come in their due time. Just as those other parts of the music will get their due focus and attention in their time. In the meantime, I’ll just live in the moment, the season, the measure, the notes I’m in.

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    It’s Wednesday, which means that I’m going to include a brief summary of what I’ve been blogging about in this past week.

    Let’s begin with last Thursday where I answered the prompt about my dream chocolate bar, which ended up being an impossible one because what’s the point of dreaming if it doesn’t transcend reality?

    Friday was my shortest post yet about why I wouldn’t change my name.

    Next up, I revealed who I spend most of my time with. (MY answer was unsurprising.)

    I wrote about what I need to live a good life. And, again, not a surprising answer.

    My tagline in a list poem: Rhena, more than this poem.

    Lastly, yesterday I wrote about what luxury I couldn’t live without.

    A bit of silence. And then a discussion of why I shouldn’t actually feel awkward about speaking aloud by myself.

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    If you enjoyed what you’ve read here, please check out other posts. Likes, shares, and reposts help get my writing out to where it needs to be. I’m also grateful for financial support. Even though I post daily, I only send out a once a week summary email to subscribers. Thank you!

  • Becoming unraveled with this question: leader or follower?

    Daily writing prompt
    Are you a leader or a follower?
    View all responses

    A few months ago, my husband bought a two-player cooperative video game called “Unravel Two.” Soon after, my son asked me to play it with him. I’m not a huge video game player. I’ll play the occasional round or two of Mario Cart and I think I might have an animal crossing account that hasn’t been opened in years. I sometimes like to watch the kids play something, but if it’s something they’re really excited about, I’d rather hear about it from their perspective.

    So sitting down to play with him was a novel experience for me. And for him.

    It’s a charming game centered around two small yarn creatures who are attached to each other with a string. They have to work in tandem to swing from place to place, build bridges, jump and climb through various scenes. It’s a bit like parkour. When we sat down to play, the duo was in a park and had somehow gotten so tangled up in what looked like a bike rack that we had no choice but to start the scene over. As a knitter, the whole thing was very relatable. As a non-gamer, it was, well, not.

    My son tried to teach me what buttons to push when and I managed to muddle through some sections. Thankfully, my character could also jump on his back sometimes and we could piggy back our way through bits and pieces. But that didn’t work for everything. Sometimes, he just took my controller and pushed the buttons to move my avatar. But there were times where both the little red one and the little blue one had to be moving simultaneously. Sometimes one had to lead and the other had to follow. Connected, as they were, with this yarn umbilicus, both had a role to play.

    My son was immensely patient with me. Probably far more patient than I sometimes am when I’m trying to get him to do something in person. This is in an of itself a lesson to me about leadership and much more.

    So what’s the answer to the question?

    I’m a leader following myself.

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    If you enjoyed what you’ve read here, please check out other posts. Likes, shares, and reposts help get my writing out to where it needs to be. I’m also grateful for financial support. 

  • The risks of living and writing.

    Daily writing prompt
    Describe a risk you took that you do not regret.
    View all responses

    I do not regret anything that was a risk. The only things that I do regret are the decisions I made that involved no risk at all, that were the easy or the safe way to go. I wrote yesterday about one of my more obvious regrets that involved very little risk: attending an MFA in creative writing. The bigger risk would have been to trust myself and go it “alone” without the so-called support of a large institution.

    This followed on the heels of a different risk that I took that I do not regret: volunteering as a teacher in Karenni Refugee Camp on the Thai-Burma border. I’ve written a bit about my experiences there here and here.

    Some of the reasons why it was a risk was that it wasn’t strictly legal for non-refugees to be living there. And the job didn’t really come with the dressings of a job in the west: a contract, insurance, union rep, HR, running water, etc…. I wouldn’t really leave with references for my next job.

    Today, I’m still trying to sort out how I can write about my time there, how the risks involved barely register now compared to how I grew from being there. I wrote my whole creative writing thesis on the topic of my time there and some history of Karenni people. And I’ve tried to shop that writing around a bit. I’ve written a few things (here) about it that have been published.

    Ironically, I think that the in moving and teaching in the camp, I took the bigger risk and I have no regrets about it. Even though I was often “confined” to my house (concerns that the refugees would get in trouble with local authorities for “harboring” a foreigner), I felt a great expansiveness and even freedom. I felt that I could be present to myself in those moments. It was trying to return to the states and live more safely that I regret. “Safe” means small, narrow, confined. In the camp, I wrote on occasion, but not nearly as much as I did when I returned to the States and entered my MFA program. The difference was that my writing in the camp was just for myself. There was no judgement involved, just expression. Not so when I was studying writing.

    I hope that in this blog, I find more ways to write about my time in Thailand and specifically in the refugee camp in ways that feel expansive and freeing and, yes, maybe even a little risky. No. A lot risky.

  • Choosing myself

    Daily writing prompt
    Describe a decision you made in the past that helped you learn or grow.
    View all responses

    Every time I decide to choose myself, to prioritize me, to give myself what I need, I grow and learn.

    To be clear, I believe that growth and learning are inherent to human nature. And while there are systems and individuals that attempt to stifle human development, we will always find a way to grow and learn. For me, the primary way that I return to this path is by making the decision to center myself.

    I wrote a while ago about how I disconnected from social media a few months ago. This was not an act of self denial, this was an act of choosing myself over social media. It took profound trust in myself that I would be able to fulfill my needs (to feel connected, to be stimulated, to be entertained) without relying on the scrolling that had taken over much of my time and brain space. I do not view this type of choice as deprivation. It is indulgence.

    In the absence of social media, I learned about myself and I learned how to “entertain” myself. Turns out, I’m pretty good at it. I learned to rely on knowledge that I already have within me. Turns out, I know a fair amount already. And I’ve grown into being able to be present to each moment.

    The decision to prioritize myself is one that I can make over and over and still continue to learn and grow. Sometimes, it’s a really easy decision (when I decide to take a nap when I feel tired) and other times, it’s rather difficult as when I have to choose myself over my kids. A few months ago, I sat down to do some writing. I knew that my daughter was waiting for her dad to give her a ride to her friend’s house. She didn’t even ask me for a ride, but I caved and offered her one anyway. I drove her and in doing so, I abandoned my writing. Not only that, but I deprived her of an opportunity to practice patience and to potentially experience some independence (she could have biked to her friend’s house quite easily). I also deprived my kids of seeing an example of a parent who prioritizes herself. But I let the fear that I’m not a good mother unless I do everything for my children get the better of me.

    More recently, I was practicing guitar and my kids were playing outside. My daughter came inside to tell me that my son had fallen down and was crying and asking for me. Of course, the mother in me wanted to go right downstairs to check on him and make sure he was ok. But another part of me really wanted to keep practicing guitar. I’ve been really tired lately because of radiation and the thought of negotiating the stairs again was a bit daunting. And my daughter was so matter of fact in her reporting of the events that I was pretty confident that her brother wasn’t in any serious danger or pain. So I sat there a moment or two trying to come to some middle ground between these two battling voices. I turned back to my guitar.

    Sure enough, within a moment or two, I heard him open the front door and call for his sister, cheerily asking her to come outside again and play. Apparently, the mortal wound had healed itself. It didn’t even require the presence of a mom. I got to continue with my guitar and my son got to experience some self care and the confidence that comes with being able to get up and dust oneself off and carry on.

    Sometimes, making the decision to choose myself is more subtle than that. As right now. I have the choice between giving you, dear reader, the satisfaction of a neatly tied-in-a-bow ending to this post. Or I have the choice of getting hitting publish and getting myself another cup of tea to enjoy while I write in my journal. I love to say it: I choose myself.

  • Matt’s Bar in Minneapolis

    Daily writing prompt
    What is your favorite restaurant?
    View all responses

    Yesterday, my daughter showed me a meme. A girl with a shocked look on her face and the text: me at five when my mom told me she doesn’t have a favorite color. As my other daughter says: real.

    I’ve always thought that having favorites of things is a really funny topic of conversation. I remember being asked often through years of school about what my favorite things were. I suspect that the teachers were trying to connect to students, learn about their preferences at least and perhaps give them a little space to bring a bit of themselves into the classroom. At least, many years later, that was part of my motivation in asking these sorts of questions as a teacher in my own classroom. It’s strange that I didn’t remember all that was involved in answering seemingly simple questions.

    As a student, I remember that there were many dynamics involved in answering such questions in front of the whole class, especially if everyone was expected to answer in turn. If I repeat the same answer (blue was always popular as a favorite color), would those who gave the same reply ahead of me accuse me of “stealing” their preference? If I chose something different, would I be teased (brown, yellow, green, and pink being the colors of poop, pee, vomit/boogers, and girls respectively)? If I stepped too far out of the box (periwinkle? mauve? chartreuse) would I isolate myself?

    And perhaps answering a “favorite” question has become no less fraught in adulthood. Certainly, I cannot think of one favorite restaurant to answer this daily prompt. I have enjoyed and do enjoy a number of different places.

    So I guess that what I’ll answer is a spot that I miss going: Matt’s Bar in Minneapolis. When we lived there, we’d eat there once or twice a month even though the line for a table was often out the door even in frigid Minnesota winters. Like everyone else, we went there for the Jucy Lucy (yes, that is how it’s spelled), which is a burger with the cheese in the middle, meaning it was melty and molten hot. I had mine with pickles and both raw and fried onions and we’d get a basket of fries for the table. The ritual was to dig out a well-done fry and use it to poke holes in the burger to make it cool down faster. They always had decent beer on tap and the regular waitress always recognized us as regular neighbors. She sometimes even comped us the fries or a drink. It’s not the sort of place that can be recreated elsewhere. I’m pretty sure most of the flavor in the burgers comes from the decades-old well seasoned grill. I don’t think I could ever pick a favorite restaurant but Matt’s certainly ranks up there as a spot that holds a lot of my favorite memories.

  • Wait. What was the question again?

    Daily writing prompt
    Where do you see yourself in 10 years?
    View all responses

    This question reminds me of the fortune telling game that I used to play as a kid called “M.A.S.H.” It involved listing four options for your future in different categories. They were usually things like: career, first initial of your husband (it was usually girls we were playing with and very heteronormative), number of kids, income, names of cities, etc… The letters of the game stood for: mansion, apartment, shack , and house. And then some sort of little ritual was performed in order to come up with a number. The number dictated which items got crossed off each list under there was one item in each category remaining. Thus, our futures would be revealed to us. “You will be living in an apartment, married to someone whose name starts with a J, working as a nurse, earning $30,000 a year in Boston.”

    In retrospect, it was pretty unimaginative and actually a little depressing. Try as we might to include unexpected variables (types of pets! different countries! color of home!) it was difficult to come up with ideas outside of our experiences, what we could see. But I don’t think that that’s terribly unusual for kids.

    So, now, as an adult, how do I view this question of where I will be in ten years? It makes me feel like I’m sitting in a job interview and being evaluated.

    I checked the question this morning before I left the house and decided that I would think about it while I was out and write the answer on my return home, which at the time would be in a couple of hours.

    Today was a beautiful day. We went to the local Thai Temple to celebrate Thai New Year with family and friends and enjoy the performances and food. It’s not quite the country-wide celebration/ water fight that it is in Thailand, but it’s still fun. My daughters and I ended up spending several hours just sitting on the picnic blanket. We’d originally thought we’d go for an hour or so, just enough time to get some mango sticky rice and maybe a few others dishes. But we were enjoying it so much that several hours slipped by. Oh, and it turns out that Tammy Duckworth was there. So that was pretty incredible just to be near her and to hear her speak.

    On the drive back, I thought for a moment, “What was the writing prompt of the day for the blog?” For the life of me, I couldn’t remember. And it turns out, I’m glad I hadn’t thought about it the whole time we were gone. If I’d been focused on thinking about what’s going to happen in ten years, I would have missed the beautiful moments right in front of me.