baking. or I am going to miss my kid.

I was in the kitchen.

Making oatmeal cream pies for Riley for a surprise going away party.

Because that was her last Saturday in the United States for the next ten months.

Because I love her.

Because she’s my kid and I’m her mom and this is what I do.

And maybe it was the oatmeal cream pies.

Or the absolute solitude I was experiencing – a rare phenomena at this season of my life.

I don’t know.

I’m sure it’s everything.

I was thinking about brown sugar and oatmeal and wondering if rolled oats were all that different from old-fashioned oats and why it really mattered anyway and suddenly – I was crying.

It’s ridiculous, you know.

Because oatmeal cream pies taste good. They’re not sad. They’re happy.

I think I can safely blame the music too.

(It’s so often the music’s fault.)

Sigh No More. Heartache for Everyone. Faith My Eyes. Into the Great Wide Open. The Land of Nod. Skin Thin. The Girl.

It doesn’t really matter if you don’t recognize any of those titles.

They’re just songs.

But they kept fitting me and my thoughts.

Not the brown sugar and oatmeal thoughts.

My other ones.

My heart is so full.

Kevin jokingly said that same morning, as we watched a shirtless Wilde Fox wander around the living room, “I know I could cry on demand now. If someone said, ‘be sad’, I could. Since becoming a dad I’m always just a millisecond away from tears.”

Actually, I guess he wasn’t joking.

I feel the same way.

It’s not like we walk around sad all day – it’s just that the tenderness and abiding affection we feel for these six humans we’re raising is so powerful and so present, it’s just always barely below the surface of our every day.

It’s complicated, but it’s not a mystery.

You know what I’m talking about.

And my heart is just so so full these days.

This week.

Right now.

Earlier – the morning before the oatmeal cream pies – Riley and I were riding in the car together.

We were talking about packing and suitcases and flights and sleeping on the plane and in flight movies.

And then we started talking about Christmas and Thanksgiving and birthdays and I had to stop that thread.

I shared with Riley my current coping mechanism.

Focus on Right Now.

Enjoy where I am – or, if not enjoy, at least BE where I am.

I have been pushing my thoughts about the next ten months somewhere else so that I can enjoy the next week.

I’ll worry about the next thing when the next thing arrives.

And it’s been basically working.

Until that morning in the kitchen.

When the oatmeal thoughts careened into the ten month thoughts and the music played in the background and Derek Webb sang “life is better off a mystery” and I couldn’t see my batter because I was crying and I didn’t even know I was that sad..