Leslie Leyland Fields

Dear Friends,

 

News news first (my long-ago journalism training.)  I'll be heading to Arkansas and Tennesee on September 13 for some speaking. Very much looking forward to meeting with a number of MOPS groups and book clubs. And will be taping several radio shows with Family Life Radio in Little Rock. (Specifics on where I'll be on my Speaking Schedule page. All events are open to the public.)  All this focused on the parenting myths book, which continues to generate much interest.

 

On my last day at fishcamp (remote island off west side of Kodiak Island, where my family and I are the only inhabitants), I rested in my new studio, built in a stand of birch trees, overlooking the ocean.  We've just finished it this summer. Redwood floors, fir paneling, arches and octagonal windows ...  and out those windows whales and sea lions, eagles and snow-heavy mountains, moody ocean. I am literally in-spired---filled with breath that I hope breathes out into words that bring breath to others as well . . .

That last day, one of the front windows had dropped in its frame, leaving a half inch gap open to the world. And this day the wind, like many days, traveling through, busy on its way elsewhere. The dropped window, that one open space, like a mouth now with a tongue ... how the wind spoke and wailed! I could not make out the words----only a general complaint so loud it kept me from work and thought and rest. (My last day there! So full of thoughts!)  I listened for an hour, then saw the damp cloths from painting in the corner. I stuffed them carefully in the window's tongue, all the way across the long window, and it was silenced. The wind now with socks in its mouth, said nothing, and I slept.

 

Rare moments of quiet in this tornado season of my life. Some of the travel and destinations and the velocity of the movement is familiar---flying out to fishcamp for the summer, the cycle of fishing, the trip to Santa Fe for 2 weeks, teaching in the Seattle Pacific University MFA---the return to fishcamp, then the return to Kodiak for the school year.  And in between all this, another trip to Florida to see my elderly father, who is not doing well.  I am ready to sit for just a little while.

 

But not much chance. It is the second day of school. Still boxes to unpack, forms to sign, sports physicals, piano lessons to arrange .. . . all that. My second eldest leaves for his first year of college tomorrow. Is any of this news?  No, just routine. But in the routine we find and take the measure of our lives.I always want more---or is that less?  The incomplete heart beats strange messages . ..  but peace is there, too.

 

Grace and Peace,

 

Leslie