I'm going to post the beginning of a blog entry

that I found today...just because it feels like the right thing to do and when I happened upon the blog, it felt like I knew someone (even though I am not a teacher as she is). The other reason is that I love the picture that goes with the blog entry because right now, as Thich Nhat Hahn writes in Peace is Every Step, our smile is in the dandelion. I need dandelions. And, as a little girl I use to make dandelion crowns so I offer you another woman's thoughts:

Sometimes, blowing on a dandelion gone to seed, I wish for superhuman capabilities. Then I count my wishes as the tiny seed umbrellas lift on the wind and scatter, and my popsicle juice-faced boy laughs wildly in delight.

I wish I could be okay with just four hours of sleep, instead of the seven I must have to function. I wish I could whirl through household tasks, setting things right, watering plants, doing laundry, and still have time to sink into a corner and read chapter after chapter in a good book.

I wish I could come home after a day of teaching, when I’ve felt every fiber in my being be endlessly tugged and frayed, as though my heart were a rope toy and the children a pack of eager pups, and still have something rich to give. I wish, after a day of reading, reacting, redirecting, reconciling, and reconstructing all the little important fragments that are meaningful to the children I teach, I could regularly have energy left for here: in my studio, after daylight has ebbed away from the walls, and lamplight pools at my desk. Energy to write two thousand words instead of two hundred.

I wish I could feel patience overflowing the bowl of my soul every night when I’m snuggling in the dark with my boy. Patience, as he reaches out his thin soft arms in the dark and wraps them around my neck, fiercely, in a lock hold. Patience as he begs again for one more snuggle, one more hug, one more kiss. Patience as time slips by and I become languorous, my eyes aching, my body sinking into the spinning dark as I sing tuneless melodies into the curve of his small ear. Patience, as I want to be right there and anywhere except there in the same breath.

....continued