Little scraps of paper hold me together. Each piece soaked in a homemade solution of effort mixed with anxiety and then layered one strip at a time over the clutter, chaos, and disarray; Clair salmagundi. These pieces of paper are lists. Ordinary registers of tasks or goals scrawled on every kind of paper that followed me through the stages of my life; from Holly Hobby notebooks to my standard yellow notepad. . If I were to crawl inside each memory and poke around a little, I would find at least …

I took my kids to the park by my house today (Sunday). It’s a little neighborhood park with a climb-o-rama, a couple of swings and a backstop in a field. We’ve been going up there more lately, since Jack loves to be outside and we don’t have much of a yard. Usually, we are the only ones there, but today was different. There was a crowd of roughly fifteen kids hanging out by some grills they obviously brought. As we settled in, with my shorties screaming (and chasing and climbing) …