Article: On Mother's Day this year...

On Mother's Day this year, we had a plan. After the breakfast-time collection of my rightful loot, after church, after a celebratory brunch, my husband was going to take the children to the zoo, and then feed them a disgusting supper featuring French Fries and soda. I'd get five blessed hours of empty house time, at which point, I would draft chapter ten in my work in progress. Heaven! I have two little kids, one still too young for school, and time to work in the productive, still air of a silent house are at a premium here.

But alas, Scott was called out of town. I spent Saturday evening helping him pack; He's not one of those helpless males who can't manage to lift a sock from the hamper to the washing machine, but he is, God love him, profoundly colorblind. Then Saturday night, child one decided there was no better time to have a virulent stomach flu. I sat up until 4 am with poor Sam, running a cool washcloth along his fevered brow and helping him back and forth from bed to bathroom. I wrote in the breaks. At 8 the next morning, my youngest, Maisy, appeared by my bed and told me her head was itching. I learned the hard way that this is toddler code for "I am about to throw up."

I was on Mom patrol the rest of the day, sitting at my computer for no more than ten minutes at a stretch. When the baby finally fell into a limp, rag doll sleep, I opened MS Word, only to have Sam appear at my office door. "I think the gerbils have made more gerbils," he said.

"Impossible," I said. "Those gerbils are brothers. Brothers can't make more gerbils."

Sam said, "Well, one brother is sitting on what looks like a lot more gerbils."

I got up and went to have a peek and sure enough, it was a Christmas Miracle in May. Or rather, eight Christmas miracles, snuggled up in a wad of adorable blind jellybeans. We re-christened their cage "Philadelphia" and spent the bulk of the evening on Google, researching what very new gerbils need to survive.

People ask me all the time how I find time to write with two little kids in the house. On Mother's Day, I realized I honestly don't know. I think it's something like this: We all know people who have a high powered career as, say a lawyer, and three kids, and they are active in their church and their community, and they are on multiple committees and don't slow down from a dead run, and yet, they have never missed a single episode of Survivor. It matters to them, it's an intense pleasure, and so they find the hour for it.

That's how writing is for me. I work it in around the edges if I have to. My Mother's Day this year consisted of one absent husband, two stomach flus, eight baby gerbils, and a draft of chapter ten. I'd call that a darn good day.

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