This week John and I are both working at the Cowan Creek Mountain Music School.  I am co-teaching Kids on the Creek, and John is the faculty coordinator.  Both of the girls are attending this year, and are with me in Kids on the Creek.  It’s a busy and exhausting week.  So many personalities in one place, lots of music and dancing, smiling, and fun.  It is in its 9th year.

It seems though that our family always has a bit of a crisis during the time of the music school.  Last year it was our van breaking down.  This year, it is the dogs killing the diddles (chicks).  They have killed two, and yesterday, we realized that we had to get the mama and the remaining seven into the old coop for safety.  They have been totally free ranging since they were born.  We hadn’t been able to touch their mother since she left the coop months ago.  I figured I’d have to have John to help me catch all of them.  In fact, I wasn’t even going to try without him.  His duties keep him at the school from morning until wee morning, and we see him in glimpses.  I had resigned to grieve the diddles and resent the dogs.

Deladis on the other hand, resigned to get the chickens into the coop come hell or high water last night.  After a thunderstorm that knocked the power out, Deladis chased the diddles all around the yard in the steady rain.  Ivy was asleep inside.  When I stepped onto the front porch to check on Deladis, I realized she was catching them!  She had a diddle in her hands.  She handed it off to me and I rushed it to the coop.  When I returned, she handed me another diddle.  “Get the mama,” I said.

They were all huddled under the front porch, and it takes quite a bit for me to maneuver under there, so I wasn’t too hopeful that Deladis could get her hands on the mama, but I knew that if she were caught, the diddles would be easier.  “Oh, she’s pecking me!”  I hear.  Then, I see my four year old turn around, her arms full of hen.  “Hang on!” I say.  We rush her to the coop, and proceed to round up the last five diddles.

The proud look on her face said it all.  Her eyes round and wide.  Her smile open and full.  “I did it, Mama,” she said.  “Are you happy at me?”  She was determined to get those chickens to safety with or without her daddy, and that she did.  I was beyond joyful at her accomplishment.  She did something I thought wasn’t doable.  Something I thought it would take our man to help us with.  Deladis taught me something last night.

What/Who am I waiting on?  I have been waiting on John to have time for barn repairs for months, so we could move the chickens down there once again.  I have been working so hard on advertising my birth work that I have neglected my housekeeping and writing.  I have been waiting on acceptance to a known literary journal before sending off the collection of stories to small presses for consideration.  I’ve been submitting those stories for two years.  I have 25,000 words on a novel that I am waiting for time to finish.  There’s no waiting.  There is just now.  Now.  Right now.  There is nothing that exists to wait for.  All that is, is present now.

Miss Angie, over at The Artist, The Mom, and mine and Deladis’s former Parent/Child (Waldorf) teacher told me once that I was exhibiting some sanguine traits.  At the time I thought – no way.  But, I couldn’t just put it off.  She had really studied the temperaments after all.  She gave us an article on parenting and temperaments.  I thought – sure, I’ll accept melancholic, even choleric, but sanguine?  I had always thought, if only I had some sanguine tendencies.  I am not the life of the party by any means.  I’m lucky if I can approach you for conversation after knowing you for some time.  I’m one of those who gets shy and ducks in and out of store aisles trying to avoid eye contact.  Not because I don’t love conversation, or crave it even, but when I’m not prepared for it, it is very hard for me to initiate.  I want to be assured that someone wants to talk to me before I approach them.  I also remember things, and have been notoriously good and holding grudges (though not any more.  What a blessing!).  I have strong opinions about a lot of things, but I don’t go declaring most of them everywhere, and in most situations my opinions aren’t such that it makes me dislike anyone or confront anyone.

However, I see what she means in that I have my hands in so much at once.  My focus changes so often, I don’t think I give anything time to really be what it is going to be.  Just go through this blog and you will see that I have this and that then that and this on my mind.  Does it mean that I need to find just one thing?  Does it mean that I need to give up my little work for the important work of mother and homemaker, so I can do those better than I am now?  I don’t think so.  I really don’t.

I think it just means that I need to focus on what needs to be done in any given day.  What work do I wake to?  What work lends itself well to the feelings of the day – mine and the girls?  Does it mean that I will take the conventional approach to things?  No, I’ve never been conventional. Does it mean that the path I had set out on will be the one that gets me to where I am going?  Nope.  In fact, I think it is most doubtful.  I need to always consider alternatives.  Always consider now.

I wonder if I can do the work down at the barn.  I wonder.  I wonder how much time and advertising to put into my birth work.  I wonder which small press I should query first.  I wonder what it will be like to pick up my novel again.  I’ve been wanting to switch this blog over to one that will allow me to do the Amazon Affiliates program, and post links to my book when it is published by a small press or myself.  I wonder if I’m computer literate enough.  I wonder.  Deladis didn’t sit and wonder.  She just did it because it needed done.