Mud and Writing and Perseverance

I submitted the excerpt to my Writing Workshop classmates two days ago.  I spent hours going over every sentence and then scrapped it all, and began again.  The crunch time was on me and I sent it in.  It is much better than the first draft and probably much worse than what the final shall be. It is done though and I am not allowed to make any more changes to it until after the workshop.

There is some satisfaction in beginning a task and seeing it through to completion.   Just yesterday, the sod around the pool was put down and watered.  The muddy pit that it was has been replaced by beautiful grass that clearly does not match the rest of the weed-infested lawn.  I never thought that I would be able to keep my floors clean again given Enzo's propensity to hop around in the mud puddles and streak throughout the house. But, alas, it is done.

I look at the challenges that I have faced in my personal life (not quite as personal as many, considering I've been venting on this blog for three years) and I see how the perseverance has paid off time and time again.  Yet, the trials do not seem to be going away. It seems that as soon as I start to get back on my feet from a blow (e.g. going to court to defend this blog for no apparent reason), I am attacked again, and thrown down for a while.  I let it happen to me last week and it is frustrating.

Yet, I am up again - much sooner than the last time.  It took me three months, at least, to recover completely from the blog debacle and the lies surrounding it.  Yet, this time, after the insults and blows to my self-esteem, I am up and back at it, trudging forward to get through and beyond and into my life.  Perseverance.

It is so much easier to see the light when I am surrounded by the light.  These kids - Paige and Tony - are electricity through my veins, the sparks that ignite my soul.  We have spent the past four days bonding.  The pool is our therapy and it is causing us to fall, exhausted, into a comfort zone where we lounge on one of our beds (yesterday it was Tony's car bed) and read nonstop.  This morning, instead of tv or video games, we played at the kitchen table, imagining a life for the toys in our hands. My conversations with Paige have been incredible - she opens up as a friend would, confiding in me about her feelings regarding the divorce and switching houses - asking me to please keep it between her and I.  We pinkie swore on it and crossed our hearts and I intend on keeping her confidences because I need her to trust me.  Tony, on the other hand, has no fear in telling me his feelings.  He says them, seeks a solution with his eyes and when I cannot give him a satisfactory answer, he asks for a solution in a different way.

I realize that I cannot completely change our circumstances, I can only react with love, and give them love and show them how to love - even when the answers aren't satisfactory.  I can only hope that one day, things will change for the better.  I can only hope that the tools I give the kids to handle their life will equip them with perseverance and understanding.

In time the kids will look back and appreciate me for who I am.  In time, they'll understand that the cards they were dealt didn't give them the fairest hand, but that they can hand them back to the dealer and demand something more from this life.

I cleaned up the mud. I got through the rough draft. Now, I simply have to maintain the lawn, and keep editing the writing.  It'll never be perfect.  But in time, I will be able to look back on all the work and be assured that I succeeded the best I could.