It rained and rained all day; it was lovely.

So soccer practice was canceled, and instead we had a nice evening at home.

Now the girls are in bed, finishing up quiet reading time, and once I post this little snippet I'm going to go do some painting. The dishwasher's going, the laundry's mostly caught up, the house is tidy enough and tomorrow I've promised myself (and informed others!) that I'll take the whole day to gather up stuff for the art event on Sunday. I'm very happy and excited about it. I'm even going to get my face painted and everything. And there'll be a parade, and tamales, and we get to dance - possibly in the rain again, like last year - through the gates of Chinatown with a band and banners and there'll be hot chocolate too.

Remind me how sweet life is when I go back into woe-is-me mode.

So much for posting more often.

But between soccer games and building altars in the shed, painting murals on the walls in the house and in a shed across town, thinking deep thoughts and listening to the birds, the days just go by, the way days will.

Yesterday my mother would have been 72 years old. She was the god of my childhood, and her moods were the weather, her face the sky. I regret she didn't live long enough to see me happy. I wish I'd seen her happy more often, and knew her better as a person and not just "mother", but wishing doesn't accomplish much, and so long after the fact it's even more of a misdirection of energy.

Does she look down on me from some great height, does she fly past me in the shape of a dragonfly, did I gather her into me in the hospital room when she died and "Don't Fence Me In" played in the background, just before six o'clock, with the oxygen gurgling and me trying to understand how my grandmother's face had eclipsed my mother's, like a mask had been slipped on. Will my mother's face be mine when I die? I know one thing. My children will know me better, and worse, and much more fully.

I wish you didn't have to die, said my eight year old daughter. I know, I said. I wish no one had to die, said my nine year old daughter. I know, I said. But think of it this way. Imagine the confusion and crowding if no one ever died. Imagine all the new ideas that would never come to be. Oh well, says one of them in reply, it's all just part of the cycle of life. And I promised not to die for many, many years. And I told them stories about how it would be when I was old and calling them to do things for me, and how they'd come home from college and tell me things, and they got up on a stool and we played at them being grownups and me being white-haired and sweet-tempered, or not.

I bet you miss your Mom, they said.

I do, I said.

A friend of mine has lovely hydrangeas.

I asked if I could cut some, to display as part of an art-thing I did a couple of weeks ago. She graciously agreed. These hydrangeas are not those ones (I left them there, I don't know where they went to when the booth was taken down) but some others, from the same bush, and a piece of the timber bamboo my husband dragged home one day from the side of the road.

My mind's blank.

But I haven't posted anything in a while, and I'd like to get back into the habit of it. I haven't been at the computer much lately. I've been painting a lot, on the walls in the house, a bit on the shed, and I made seven dollars painting the eyes and whiskers back on a tea-kettle-cat. (I didn't do a very good job on the whiskers.)

Today at soccer practice my daughter absconded with my sketchbook and four of my pens, to go draw and giggle with her friends while her sister ran around the field. I held some loose papers on my lap and drew on that, nothing in particular, just whatever came to mind. My daughter's friends came over and oohed over my picture and my daughter proudly told them I'd begun painting their room like a jungle. One of the girls complimented me and told me I should be an artist. I thanked her and said I just happened to be an artist, which impressed her to no end.

The days are cooler and shorter and the afternoon light when it comes is even more beautiful than it was in summer, when it became oppressive and I longed for rain. Yesterday the sun shone while the rain fell and the birds sang and I enjoyed it from the house looking out at the shed and the shed looking back at the house.

I came to epiphanies about control and illusion. It was a full day. I made meals, beds, apologies, progress.

Now if I could just grit my teeth and sit down at the computer and sort out my pictures. There are just so many.

In my dreams I have two weeks alone by the ocean to write, draw and paint.

Or just to walk aimlessly along the beach, or not walk at all but just sit and listen to the water. Drape kelp in odd patterns. Build bonfires from driftwood. Carve the damp, firm sand.

I haven't been taking many pictures lately.

I'm not certain why. It doesn't seem to pull at me, the camera, so I don't pick it up, and the days go by and of course now that I'm thinking about this I wonder: am I reminding myself to charge the battery and light some candles tonight in the shed and take some pictures after I maybe paint a bit more on the walls.

I'm making slow but steady progress, though of course the work would go along faster if I had a plan and didn't just paint ecstatically, without stopping, and without intention other than dipping the brush and seeing what happens when I push the brush this way or that way, or mix this with that, or scrub with the brush almost dry, or scrape with the edge of the metal part, and uncover something, and cover it again, and of course as I'm writing this there's the part of me that sits back and says oh yes, obsession, a classic case, but don't we all have our crosses to bear, I suppose we do, and apparently this sort of pre-occupation is mine, and some days what a delight that burden is to carry, or to set aside for a moment or two, and choose to pick up again, and see in an unfamiliar and clarifying light.

I sang for my sister by the fire.

No accompaniment, spontaneous, as natural as speaking. Hoarse, from too much speaking, and tears given into and tears held back, some of joy and some of a deep and unrelenting sorrow, for all the wasted days and misunderstandings.

But it was a true moment, and we both cried, and hugged each other, and promised to keep in better touch.