Two weeks ago, when I went to the dentist for a check up, I discovered why my bottom right tooth has been twinging back at me when I floss: it was cracked along the back. The dentist showed me the crack with his magical magnifying camera-that-fits-in-mouths; it sort of gave me nightmares to see it.

Not as much as the impending shots in the mouth, but still. I could have done without that image.

Today I went in to get that tooth, with its cracked filling that extended into the tooth, and another one, also with a cracked filling, fixed. Two teeth, and of course they can't be next to each other, or even on the same side. Top left, bottom right. Half of my top lip and cheek were numb; half of the bottom, too, but on the opposite side, so I felt like I had a checkerboard smile. I think the dentist had to use a half gallon of Novocaine to get me numb. With that pre-numbing stuff they use now, the shots didn't really hurt much, but my body didn't like it. My heart started racing and my face was flushed and I felt this close to passing out.

I concentrated on deep breathing.

Deep breathing and fuming at my old dentist, who really was old. He went to dental school with Kendell's dad (who was also a dentist). We started going to him when our other dentist stopped taking our insurance. The strange thing was: I went twelve entire years (going to the previous dentist) without getting a cavity. Then, when we started going to Kendell's dad's friend, I had a new cavity nearly every time I went. I hated going to that dentist. I mean, I always hate going to the dentist. But this man was...well, he was old. He was ready to retire, so he didn't want to update his office. He'd get grumpy with the kids when they got scared. He thought that silver fillings were much better than those newfangled white ones.

I don't know why we kept going to him, other than a sense of obligation because he was Kendell's dad's friend.

Really, I should have been fuming at myself. The fact that my dislike of the dentist was made exponentially worse by that particular dentist should have been a clue to my (dense) self: go somewhere else. There are approximately 8 million dentists where I live. Why stick with one who made me miserable? And one who gave me unnecessary fillings. Unnecessary fillings that were far too big, and thus caused that ugly crack in my tooth and a surge of tooth-related nightmares.

I survived my dental appointment today, but only barely. What hurts more than the sharp ache in my jaw is knowing that it's very nearly my own fault. I brush, I floss, I use Listerine, but what I didn't do was listen to my intuition. I let a sense of misguided obligation make me miserable. It makes me wonder. I'm nearly 40 years old; when will I be old enough to trust my gut?

A couple of weeks ago, there was a bloggity/scrapbookity thing going around some of the scrapbook blogs I read.  It started here. My Write.Click.Scrapbook friend Keshet reminded me a few days later that I meant to do it. The challenge is to simply write down some things that are in your heart. While I try to be authentic and honest on my blog, I sometimes don't write the things I've been wanting to write because (as always) there are so many things to do with my time. Sometimes blogging gets put on the back burner. But somehow, everything I like to do has been on the back burner lately.  

I've been swamped with busy-ness. I haven't actually accomplished anything. Half of my pantry is downstairs and all of the stuff that goes in my linen closet is scattered in various temporary-storage pockets. I haven't finished a layout, worked my way through any of my writing goals, or stitched a single stitch on the two  three quilts I thought I would definitely finish this month. We still need to paint the hall and the kitchen and the front room. I didn't take Haley to get the pedicure I've been promising her for ages. I haven't gone on a single fall hike or done an autumn photo shoot. I've just...hopped from thing to thing like a hyperactive kid who forgot her Ritalin.

But tonight I'm going to do it: just write down some things that are in my heart, right now.

• I love my kids. OK, that's hardly newsworthy. I've always loved them. But right now seems especially good. They're all wrapped up in the complexities of their lives, but I feel connected to each of them in new ways. Partly this is because of changes I've been trying to make within myself—to try to be calm in the face of antagonism and to not lose my patience and, most importantly, to keep my heart open to them. They are wonderful and marvelous and amazing and I just am so grateful to be their mom!
• The mountains this fall are gorgeous. I cannot remember them ever being so red. I think it's from all the rain we got this spring, but whatever the cause: I can't stop looking at them. I've taken to eating my lunch outside in the backyard, just so I can gaze at the mountains. I remind myself nearly every day: it's fall, it's fall! There is no better time of the year than September through November.
• All of the busy-ness that's making it so I can't do much of anything, creative-wise, is making me insane. One of my friends once said something that felt like a compliment: "You're the kind of person who always has to have something creative you're working on." When I don't get some solitude and a chance to write, or scrapbook, or quilt, I start getting frustrated. My creative urges get expressed in ever-sharpening snarkiness. Sarcasm as a creative outlet might lead to some laughter but I can be mean if I don't stop myself. I don't like that part of me.
• I love that, eleven years into my running project, I am still learning about myself and this sport. I've been a fairly consistent 9:45-10:00-miler runner forever. If I pushed I could eek out a 9:00 mile but not for very many miles. I did speed work and hill repeats to no avail: my pace stayed the same. I had no idea that the way to improve my consistent speed was to run more. But somewhere in my marathon training, I've gotten faster. Not on my long runs—I still do those at my 10:00-mile pace. But on the shorter runs—5-8 miles—I've gotten faster. I can hold an 8:30 pace for about six miles now. I don't share that out of a desire to brag but as an astonishment. I didn't expect this change to happen. But I'll take it as long as it lasts!
• Speaking of running, I am starting to get anxious about what will happen after the marathon. Well, after the marathon and then the half marathon I'm going to run at the end of October. While I still haven't managed to make the scale budge, I have, finally, lost some girth. Last week when I put on my favorite jeans, I discovered they were too big on the waist and nearly loose in the thighs. As I never lose inches on my legs, this is another astonishment. But I am scared that as I start cutting my mileage back, the inches will all come back. I can't keep up my 40-mile weeks, but it seems they're the only way I can maintain.
• I hate that I'm afraid of gaining weight. I want to be happy and content in my own skin and not feel like my body is always on the brink of mutiny. I want to know I could still be happy if I gained, say, 50 pounds. I don't want my happiness to be dependent upon what size I wear. This feels like another personal failure, feeling that way.
• My library is hosting the writer Brian Doyle. I am unseemingly excited about this. Like, every time I think of it about it I do a little happy dance.

Tell me: what's in your heart?

Way back in 1993, when Kendell and I were building our house, one of the easiest decisions we made was the kind of kitchen floor we wanted: wood. We knew it would be one of the most expensive things we did, and we had to scrape some mostly-empty money barrels to make it happen, but we were determined.

Since the day we moved in (December 18, 1993) I've loved my wood floor. It's easy to clean, plus it's easy to not clean (meaning, if I neglected it for a few weeks, it didn't look all that awful). The only thing that didn't make me happy was the damage inflicted by the plumbers, who installed our kitchen faucet wrong. Water leaked right in front of the sink in a roughly 4x4 foot puddle, but they ensured us that all would be fine. A couple of fairly naive twenty-somethings (I was only 21!), we believed them. Not a month later, the wood that had been under the puddle warped, but but then it was too late to make the plumbers fix it, since we'd already closed on the house.

I put a rug down on the warpyness and lived with it.

So we've put off refinishing our wood floor for nearly 18 years. We knew we wouldn't be able to do the easy method, which involves a light sanding and a new coat of sealant. Instead, we'd need some fairly aggressive sanding and two coats. Our floor suffered a little bit through four active babies and a busy family, most of whom inherited my tendency to drop things. As the years passed, it got dented and scratched and dinged in places. I cleaned the space under the bar so often that there was literally no finish left in spots. Slowly, each piece of wood outlined itself in dirt that couldn't be cleaned out. But, on the other hand: my battered wood floor didn't require much attention. If someone dropped something, I didn't cringe and worry about a shout and a ding.

It was a drama-free floor.

Somewhere in the last six weeks or so, we decided we'd get the floor refinished. I'm not really sure how this came about, other than we just couldn't stand it anymore, and we found someone who gave us a reasonable bid. So last week, I emptied everything out of my kitchen (which took longer than I expected), gave it a final sweep, and packed a bag (well, six bags to be precise) to make room for the wood floor guys. They sanded out the bumpy bits by the sink. They filled in the Phillips-head-screwdriver-shaped hole that those same plumbers made 18 years ago. They buffed out all the evidence of busy babies. And they applied the coats of sealant.

Today, my floor is beautiful again, a velvety, matte, gleaming surface. We're still living on fast food and snacks since we can't put the fridge and the stove back in until Monday night. Most of my kitchen is still crammed in my living room, and everyone has to wear socks until Tuesday morning. I am completely dreading the restuffing of the kitchen. But here's the strangest thing:

I feel guilty.

Like I should be apologizing for my newly-refurbished floor. Like I don't deserve it, or I should be embarrassed for it. I don't understand this shame. Perhaps it comes from the envy I feel about other people's houses—I try to tamp it down but I do wish for one of those big, beautiful houses on the hill. But there's a sense of, I don't know, pride, I suppose, that I take in our austerity. As if the fact that I don't have a big, beautiful house on the hill (bbhoh for short) were a badge of honor or a token of...something. Humility? Sackcloth and ashes? Making my floor look like it belongs in one of those bbhoh puts a tarnish on it. 

Maybe I understand it better than I thought.

To divert my consciousness from its shame spiral, I'm thinking about all the non-glamorous stuff we still have left to do. Like, save me: repaint part of the kitchen. I'd nearly rather do anything—go to the dentist, even—than painting. The entire hall needs to be repainted too, and the front room. There's that little twinge of knowing that even when it's painted, my house still won't be a bbhoh. And that even if I did live in one, I still would be clueless as to interior design. We'd just have a lot more empty wall space because we never find wall art we both like. It's my own weird quirk that the twinge is also a comfort.

Back at the beginning of July, when I was slowly building my long runs into the low and middle teens, I approached my 15-mile run with trepidation. Fourteen miles was the longest I had ever run in my life, so all longer runs are new territory. When I finished running 15 miles, I was tired. Tired. I kept thinking: how am I going to do the marathon, now that I've signed up and am officially committed? How will I be able to run for eleven more miles when I feel so wiped out after running just 15?

But, I took a deep breath. I reread some of the marathon training sites I like. I reminded myself to trust in the process, and I moved on in my training plan.

Strangely enough, I started to get nervous to do my long runs. Sometimes these nerves have been nearly enough to undo my resolve to get my shoes and out the door---but not quite. I've missed a couple of shorter (5 mile) runs, but not a single long run. I got through the nerves by focusing on my process of getting ready. I've done all of my long runs in my favorite pink running skirt. It's my favorite because it's exactly the right length, a titch longer than the usual running skirt, which means the shorts under the skirt are long enough to cover my chubby inner thighs and prevent chafing. But I also love it because it has two little pockets, one on each leg. Pockets mean I can carry some fuel for my run (namely, Cliff Blocks). To get ready for each long run, I follow the same process: get dressed, apply sunscreen to my face, Myomed to my knees, and Glide to my bunions. Then I sit down and make sure I have no toe fuzz before I put on my socks (trust me...multiplied by so many miles, even the tiniest bit of toe fuzz can be disastrous), which are always, on long runs, my favorite cushioned pair of SmartWools. I find my watch and my MP3 player, and then I pull my hair back into a ponytail. This action---the making of the ponytail---is a sort of switch. Once I do that, my nerves start to calm. It cues my body that it is ready to go and I don't need to worry.

In August, I got to this point I’ve never been to in my running: wondering what I am doing. Training for a marathon takes a lot of time. It nearly feels like a second part-time job. I’d been getting more and more obsessive about not deviating even a bit from my training plan. And while my body has changed a little bit—it feels a bit stronger and leaner and tighter—the fact that my scale wouldn’t budge (still hasn’t) was discouraging. Still, I’m trying to not let this feeling discourage me, but push through it. And I’ve had some long runs that have been amazing.

Last week, I made it to the litmus of marathon training: the twenty mile run. This is approached by a two-steps-forward, one-step-back sort of approach: mileage is increased for two weeks in a row, and then jumps back a bit for a rest week. (If you consider fifteen miles restful, which, oddly enough, they do feel just like that: 15 miles is short when the week before you ran 18.) Depending on the training schedule you're using---I'm using Hal Higdon's intermediate plan---you build up to one or two 20 mile runs (or, sometimes, longer), and then you taper, which means the last two weeks or so before the race, you run less and less, to give your body a chance to rest before the next big push---26.2 miles.

For my first twenty mile long run, I plotted a route that took me along Utah Lake, one of my favorite places to run. It was partly out and back, partly through neighborhoods, partly along quiet back roads. And right through an enormous construction project I hadn't taken into account. The hazards of running through a construction zone (the catcalls from the workers, the lack of any sort of shoulder on the road and the fact that I was often running right alongside cars and praying none of them hit me; at one point, a kind and non-catcalling construction dude had me wait for a minute while he stopped all the cars going both ways so I could run without fearing death) slowed me down a bit. But in general, I felt awesome. Tired, of course, but not excessively so. I finished 20.5 miles (I threw in that extra .5 mile just to make sure) and felt like I could keep going.

In fact, I feel ecstatic. Euphoric. Absolutely confident that I can run a marathon.

Not so yesterday, when I finished my second twenty miler. For this run, I took a completely different route. I started from my dentist's office (after getting a cleaning and hearing the news that two more of my fillings have cracked), headed down to the river trail, and started up the canyon. Usually when I do an out-and-back along the river trail, I'm happy. It was beautiful. But I was almost immediately weary. It's one of the strange things about running. Sometimes you feel perfect: energetic, and smooth gliding, and that's when running feels nearly effortless. Other days, it's the exact opposite: as if your shoes are made out of concrete and you weigh an extra 100 pounds and there's a layer of wet wool stuck in your trachea that you must pull air through. The latter is how I felt yesterday from the very beginning; not an auspicious start to a run that took me 3 hours and 20 minutes (excluding water breaks!)

But I slogged along. I've been listening to the Harry Potter audio books during my long runs, so he, Ron, and Hermione traveled along with me. I stopped for water and a Block and a quick ITB stretch at every fountain; I also doused my forearms, which somehow helps me feel cooler. I reapplied sunscreen once an hour or so. And I moved slower, and slower, and slower. The last half mile of my twenty was a steep uphill, and I'm not even sure the way I moved up that hill could be called "running." I did make myself put on a burst of speed for the last block, but I confess: I don't know what I would have done if I had to run six more miles.

I finished my second twenty feeling horrible. Nauseous and dizzy and exhausted. My legs hurt, the entire length of them, as if it wasn't blood but needles running through my veins. My lungs were spent, my back ached, and my knees were as stiff as an old woman's. I felt the opposite of last week's twenty: dejected and unhappy and defeated. Completely sure whether or not I can run a marathon.

Now, a day after my second twenty, I’m feeling a little bit better. I’m hoping it was so hard because it was the second one, and I didn’t give my body a chance to rest between them. Or that it was the dentist’s fault, or the fact that I didn’t start until almost 11:30, or the heat or the route or the mysterious indefinable thing that just makes running hard. I am, I confess, looking forward to my upcoming weeks of tapering. And I’m trying to take a deep breath (even though my lungs seem like the most tired part of my entire body) and trust, again, in the strength and wisdom of the process. I hope it will be enough to get me through my upcoming 26.2 miles

In church today, we discussed life after death. You would think, so soon after my dad's death, this lesson would have been a comfort to me, reminding me of the beliefs I cling to. But somehow it was too much too soon. Or not enough. Before the lesson even started, when I read the day's topic, I thought I should probably go out. But I was sitting next to an older woman, someone I admire and adore, but who has a hard time shifting around, and I didn't want her to have to rustle her legs aside so I could get past, so I stayed put.

Stories and testimonies were shared, and at first I was OK. But it built up in me. What was said and written isn't enough for me. Listening to people talk so serenely and surely about their experiences brought back my reocurring image of Dad, the one that is an amalgam of my coffin-viewing panic attack and the sight of his coffin at the cemetary. I keep coming back to a disconnect: where I know his body is, what I don't know about the location of his soul. The things the scriptures don't tell us: what paradise looks like, and what it feels like to be there, and how we live. I cannot picture where he is, other than in the dark, cold grave.

The lesson touched me, but it didn't comfort me. It brought me back to the place I found a few minutes after he had passed, when I went outside and sat in Dad's backyard and looked at the trees he'd planted, scarred, nurtured, pruned, neglected, cultivated, watered. Still growing, even though he was gone; a strange sort of peace that dripped sorrow. People die. I longed for him to go, to be free of the prison his mind was, but now he is gone it is different sort of gone than I expected.

This is, perhaps, a weakness of my faith. If I had a stronger testimony, I perhaps would be able to find peace with what we do know. Or, perhaps it is just a part of me that hasn't had a chance to learn and to grow yet. This limping along of grief is, perhaps, also a thing to cultivate, like the trees were before they grew. A seed, of sorts.

I couldn't help it: I started crying, there in the Relief Society meeting. Those deep, heaving sobs, the ugly ones that keening was invented for, and yet I was trying to be quiet, to not disturb anyone, and it was like swallowing something too large and sharp and hard for my throat, my whole body absorbing that thing I couldn't say and only letting a few tears escape.

Then I felt something: a friend I didn't notice sitting behind me put her hand on my shoulder. She patted and squeezed briefly and I knew she saw and I knew it was ok, and then the ugly racking subsided in my body and flooded out in silent tears that started to water something.

For nearly three weeks, I haven’t reset the chrono timer on my running watch. It’s been stuck there, at 1 hour 58 minutes and 53 seconds, because I can’t bear to not have that visual proof of a long-strived-for goal.

I ran my first marathon, the Hobble Creek Half, in 2003, with my sister Becky. We slept at my mom’s house, and stayed up too late talking and laughing. This meant we woke up late and then rushed to the bus pick-up spot—the high school we’d both attended, her far more successfully than I—in my dad’s car. Then we couldn’t get the key out of the ignition, and then we realized we needed to leave our jackets in the car, and then we couldn’t lock the door. Once we got the car figured out, with the help of a friendly passerby, we started walking over to the busses, only to watch the last one pull away. So, instead of riding in a bus to the top of Hobble Creek canyon, we raced back to Dad’s car, wrestled with the lock again, and drove ourselves. Except, we couldn’t park at the top, so instead we parked at a random pull-out spot that seemed to be close to the top, and started walking up to the beginning. Then, when runners going down the canyon started to pass us, we turned around and started our race.

And that is how, on my first half marathon, I managed a sub-two-hour time: I didn’t run the entire 13.1 miles.

Since I’ve now run the same race two more times, once in 2004 with my friend Midge and once again three weeks ago, I know that where we turned around and started running was less than a quarter-mile from the start of the race, so I wasn’t far off. Still, I’ve had the same goal now for eight years: run a half marathon—an entire  half marathon—in less than two hours. I’ve never been exceedingly far off; my longest half was the Provo race, when I wasn’t really ready, and it was cold, and my ITB was killing me, and it took me 2 hours and 18 minutes. I got so tantalizingly close at the Moab Half, coming in at 2 hours and 48 seconds. "It’s close enough," so many people told me, but I despaired. I didn’t want to be close enough. I wanted to really do it. But I wasn’t sure I ever would—after all, when I got that close, it was at the culmination of a different goal, to run four half marathons in a year. When else would I have that sort of endurance built up?

I thought that perhaps, last fall, I’d finally do it when I ran the Halloween Half. This is a race with a steep beginning downhill; the first nearly-six miles you lose about 1700 feet in elevation. The canyon was beautiful and the temperature perfect and I flew down that grade, passing the 9-minutes pacer and the 8 1/2-minutes pacer and nearly catching up to the 8-minute pacer when I left the canyon—and hit the nearly-flat part. (Three hundred feet of elevation loss in nearly seven miles.) The nearly-flat part I’d done almost all of my long training runs on. My legs seemed to lose all ability to push along; the pacers caught up with me, then passed me by, and I felt like weeping. I know now that I should have trained with more steep-then-flat downhills so my legs were used to the seemingly-skidding halt the flat parts provide, but during the race I knew nothing other than discouragement. I ran through seven miles of The Wall and finished in 2:04:27.

To be honest, then, this year when I planned my half marathon (the one my training schedule suggests you run), I nearly didn’t think about that sub-two-hour goal. I was just looking at the Hobble Creek Half (which I finally managed to get a spot in) as another long training run, except with a bus ride to the top, water stations, cheering supporters, mile markers, and lots of people to run with. Plus, I’ve been running my long runs at a fairly slow pace (again, as suggested by my training schedule and nearly every running book I’ve ever read). Finishing in under two hours didn’t feel important.

Like the first time I ran Hobble Creek, I spent the night at my mom’s. She dropped me in the morning, so there were no missing-the-bus possibilities. (The race won’t let people drive to the start anymore anyway.) At the top, I huddled in my sweats until thirty seconds before the race started, dropped my bag in the back of the truck that took it (along with everyone else’s) back down to the finish line, and started my watch more out of habit than hope. But, again out of habit, I glanced down to check my time at the one mile marker, and nearly stumbled when I saw the numbers: 8:20. Thinking it was a fluke, I left the time alone until I got to the third mile: 26:18. This meant I was doing about 8:15 miles. Stolid, dependable me, always closer to a ten-minute mile than any other number? I nearly didn’t believe my watch.

So I started doing running math, making sure at each mile that my pace was staying in the 8-something range. A few strides after the sixth mile, another runner asked me for the time, and then he seemed baffled, too. "I should be back with the 10-minute-mile runners," he said between steps. "I’m not sure how I’m going this fast."

"I know! I feel the same way. But I’m going to take the speed as long as it will come," I said. And then I left him.

I didn’t want to trust my time. In fact, every time I thought about the sub-two-hour possibility, I’d nearly start to cry, and as running and crying do not mix, I just tried hard to concentrate on the math, and to keep my pace up, and not think about how I’d feel if I hit The Wall again. Feel adventurous, I even downed a Cliff Shot at the 6.5-mile aid station. I hate Shots as much as I hate Gu, but the volunteer sort of shoved it in my hand, and what else could I do but take it? It was coffee-flavored and delicious and didn’t make me gag in the slightest, the texture more like caramel than the mocha-y snot I was expecting.

The last three miles of this race are nearly flat, and the scenery loses its brilliance. Instead of mountain canyon, you wind through suburbia (past my aunt and uncle’s old house, even). The very last mile is along a wide, straight rode, utterly void of charm. I knew I was slowing down a bit, all those fast miles catching up with me. I really wasn’t sure if I would make it, but I resisted looking at my watch. I just pushed as hard as I could with everything I had left. [the last 10 seconds or so of the race; they made us take our earphones out when there was .25 miles left and it made me a little nuts to have them slapping against me, so I held them like that while I finished. Don't tell, but I could still just barely hear my music; "Authority Song" brought me to the end]

The .10 part of the 13.1 miles seemed the longest bit, wrapping around a church and dropping onto grass. I heard Kendell cheering but I didn’t see him. I just pushed, and then as soon as I passed the finish line I pushed stop on my watch. And there it was, the goal fulfilled, the time I can’t bring myself to clear:

1:58:53.

My friend Jessica, who I didn’t know was also running the race, was at the finish line.  
[please note the cheesy grin on my face; also, the unfortunate placement of my race bib makes my lumpy belly look lumpier and chubbier than it really is]

"Did you do it?" she asked in an excited voice. And if I had any moisture left in my body, I would have burst out in tears. The happy, good tears. I could answer, finally, yes. I achieved my goal of running a half marathon in under two hours.

As I talked to Kendell while I devoured two pieces of watermelon, sipped a chocolate milk, and stretched, I felt a little niggling voice creep in. "You shouldn’t be this excited over coming in just barely under two hours," it jeered. "Think of all the people who finished before you!" But I refused to let my usual self-doubt ("and plus, you only did it because it was nearly all downhill")  ruin the moment. Instead I kept looking at my watch, and thinking about my dad who had been in my heart, and just relishing what felt like a win despite the fact that I didn't win the race.

Finally ready to go, we gathered up Kaleb (how handy was it to have the race finish in a park? This meant that all the supporting children were saved from the usual race-finish boredom!) and started walking back to the car when I remembered I’d forgotten to get my sweats bag. I went back to find it, and as I did I heard a couple of runners talking to each other. "I’m just so excited that I managed to finish in two hours and twenty seven minutes!" one gushed to the other. "I feel so good about it!" I found my bag and they wandered away, but I wanted to hug that runner. She’d completely silenced my self-doubt and reminded me: in running, it is nearly never about who runs faster (or slower) than you. Her under-two-and-a-half-hours goal was no less worthy of merit than my under-two goal, and my feelings of accomplishment didn’t have to pale in the face of, say, Jessica’s 15-minutes-faster-than-me PR. All that mattered?

I finally, finally, after eight years of carrying it with me, achieved this goal. I did it. Which has to mean that I can also achieve other goals, even the ones I’ve carried with me for even longer.

On August 31, I went running at 8:30. It was already hot, the heat wafting up from the sidewalk in little waves, a palpable thing to shuffle through.

On September 1, I went running at 8:30. I stepped outside into cool air, the temperature of shade even in the sun; an unruffled wind lapped at my heels.

I can't think of another year when fall arrived so abruptly. Although even in the mountains the trees haven't started changing yet, the air has here in the valleys. It's cooled off just enough that I can enjoy the sunshine on my forehead again. The light is a different color, too, that golden hue of summer's end. Now we're a week into September; it's rained once and all the other days have been deliciously warm.

This afternoon I ate lunch outside on our back patio. I read my book while I ate, something I nearly always do when I'm eating alone. I looked at the mountains; I let the sun fall on my legs. The impeccable timing of literature happened when I read this sentence: "Who could sit here and look at this and not believe in the good intentions of the world?" (from the novel To Be Sung Underwater  by Tom McNeal)

Today, in the middle of an exquiste, perfect, early-autumn afternoon, I believe in nothing but the world's good intentions.

Monday April 17, 1995: I went shopping at Walmart. I know the date only because it was the week that Haley was born, and I always went to Walmart on Mondays after work. What did I buy? Probably refried beans, spaghetti, bananas, pears, and chocolate chips. Probably just one more of those packages of tiny diapers, and maybe another package of wipes, and perhaps a few binkis or a container of baby lotion (Johnson & Johnson's, of course), or whatever other baby thing I couldn't resist. I know what I had on, even: my favorite blue denim dress, which was not a maternity dress, but I was tiny enough with that pregnancy to get away with it. I still remember what another Walmart shopper said to me, an older woman with grey hair and a wobbly head: "My goodness, dear! You are enormous! Are you having twins?" because her comment made me cry when I got back to the car. (The car! It was my favorite car we ever owned, a Honda Accord the color of "rosewood"; I loved that car!)

But here is what I remembered the most from that evening, this morning after I went running and then to Walmart: walking through the parking lot, pushing a cart despite my awkward belly, and realizing: the next time I go grocery shopping, I'll have this baby with me! I remembered that moment today because it was the last time I'd grocery shop without a small one with me for some time—until, in fact, this morning. It hit me, all of a sudden as I walked across the Walmart parking lot, how much is passed in my life. I won't ever have my own little one to take to the store with me again. That part is gone.

I watched all the young moms there in the store. One had a sobbing daughter who didn't like the color of chapstick she'd picked out and really, really wanted to get a different one. Another with a cartful of three little boys and barely any room for groceries. One with a new baby wailing in its carseat. I have been all of those women, and when I was I noticed the women not like me, the ones shopping all by themselves. How nice that must be! I thought of them, to shop without kids. Yes: I've made it to this point in my life, where if I want I can always grocery shop by myself. But I'm not sure if "nice" is really the word for it.

Sure, there's the trade-off. There's a speed and a lack of frustration that comes with shopping all on your own. No one pestering me to buy a toy or a package of cupcakes. No one grabbing a tomato from the pyramid and starting a tomato avalanche. No one running away or getting lost; no one crying in the cart. No one begging for one of these and some of those and a bunch of that. I was in and out of the store in twenty minutes and I spent half of what I usually do.

But the other side of the trade off is this: there was no one. No one to make me laugh, no soft little head to ruffle, no one to help me remember just how desperately much we neeeeeeed some of that yogurt with Oreos you mix in. The trade off for speed and less frustration is less happiness and light.

When I got back to my van after shopping, I sat there and cried, just like I did that Monday evening 16+ years ago. I couldn't help think of the contrast. That person I used to be (sobbing in the car and feeling enormous) still had everything in the future to imagine and look forward to, years of carting babies and toddlers and preschoolers around with her. Years, yes, of wishing desperately for just a little bit of solitude, but all those tiny, individual moments of holding a child's sticky hand. What I have now is only looking backward: remembering the sticky hands and the soft, fluffy heads and the sweet voices. Remembering, and grateful to have the memories, grateful for all I got to do. But still wishing I had more looking forward to do, and less looking back.