Some days I drive up to our little house with the perfect porch and I sit in the car giving myself the same little talk you go in and you smile, find some part of your day you can talk about without opening the worry spot.  And some days I can do this-- walk through the door, give the sweetest man a kiss, smile and hide my day by asking of his.  Some days I can do more.  I can talk about my people, give an update without dipping into the well of feelings building in my heart for clients who dominate my days and steal into my nights.

Last night I could do none of that, I could not even hear the little talk outside the house.  I made it through the door, through a little kiss, and into the bathtub with the hottest water my skin could stand and a book that is the same kind of story my day runs into in our town and in the rural wilds of North Idaho where the first of the month means carts of white bread and frozen meat dishes, shampoo from the dollar store, razors and shaving cream for Christmas presents, anger about how expensive trash bags have become and a splurge: a bag of cheese puffs for the long drive from town to home talking of the way the land has changed and her children and oh hun, you have to watch me, I could eat this whole bag if I let myself.

Here is the rub.  To push down the will to pull them out and to leave my world at home, to attempt to enter theirs during the day and to leave them there is hard on good days and even harder is finding the skills to pass to them that will help them to push against their world for themselves, to broaden it maybe to understand it I suppose to give them a voice in a conversation about a system that is continually on the table- warmer to be successful in those spaces that exist in all worlds, in the cooking of meals, in the tidying of our bodies, in the fostering of the kindness born soul deep and spilled out into words carrying sound world wide oh hun.