Right now

" It's gone. My luggage. My time in Gangshan. My six weeks with Sister Zhong. 'I very love you.', she told me tonight. I very love her too. And am happy, because when things end, you can't go back and change anything or have more. You just smile at your pile of terrific normal everydays, and look up.

I will miss:
        Grandmas with training wheels on their bikes
        "good morning!" pelted at us as we run by at 6:30 am
         Guanli's excitedly giving us our mail
         Old man shuffling around the track, waving his arms
         Fresh and cheap guava from the woman squatting on the side of the road
         the bridge
        dirty chapel on the 8th floor of a business building
        teaching English in a tiny smelly padded room"
fall 2008

My life is closing and opening again. The years of putting most everything into teaching and loving my six year old Chinese students are gone. Of having every minute of my day from 8:35- 3:20 alert, engaged, managing, laughing, encouraging. And then almost every minute after thinking about and planning for the next day. So many faces. So very very much effort. (yes. Two verys)

And now I stare at the future, which, if you've ever tried, is hard to do. I am a mom. I am free to spend my time being that. And what else?

It's almost easier when you have some big something, somewhere you have to be or do, to feel your progress and usefulness every day. You can not worry so much about what to do but rather how you are doing it and how you can do it better. But when there are no such demands?

It's exciting to me to think now I create each day myself.  Besides teaching my few violin students, the time is just waiting there for me to make it something. I want to improve my chinese? I am in charge of doing that. No one is going to make me improve, be a good mother, learn the things I wish I could. I choose.

My problem however, has never been in the dreaming and planning great things to do. I can think of all sorts of wonderful acts of service, skills I will seek to own, and people in need of visiting. It's the follow through I need to learn.

Boxes. Boxes of thank you cards I tell you. Thank you cards and letters that I have written and never sent. To the point of it being slightly ridiculous. And so that is my next and biggest goal. As some brilliant person in charge of marketing at Nike once said, Just do it.