Dear Daughters,

Sometimes I write drafts of letters to you and then don’t share them. It’s usually when I’m feeling rather blah about life on a particular day, when I’m not feeling productive or focused on the tasks at hand but instead just want to crawl into bed and read my book and let you watch a show on the iPad. (Unfortunately for me, you don’t actually want to watch shows when you could be doing fun things like building a playground out of our living room furniture or running around the yard making soup from grass and weeds and sticks and leaves.)

On those blah days, sometimes albeit rarely, at the end of the day, I catalog what the day has been, and sometimes, it helps me to cultivate gratitude. Because I know, even when I don’t feel like it, that in every day, life has been accomplished.

In every day, grace has been offered and received.

In every day, there is reason to refocus my eyes.

But most days, when I most need that, when probably all I need to do to see is blink a few extra times, I don’t manage to. My day feels blah. Nothing seems profound. What I write is bland.

Tuesday was one of those days, the first day home after our vacation. I was having one of those days with all the feels. It’s now Friday, and I’m only slightly better. But I re-read what I drafted on Tuesday night, and I can see now that it wasn’t nearly as low of a day as it felt in the living of it.

Because in the living of it, I couldn’t see the holy of it, not at first.

But now I can.

So I’m offering Tuesday’s letter after all.

Here’s what I wrote on Tuesday night, after you were in bed, while your dad practiced his upright bass in the basement, as I tried to refocus:

Today did not feel like a productive day. I started it off bright and early with a to-do list of things I might want to consider accomplishing.

I did very few of those things.

At the very least, I should have done some laundry.

No, at the very least, I should have emptied out my suitcase from our trip last week. We got back last night close to 11 pm, and I’m pretty tired today, but there are damp swimsuits in a grocery bag inside that suitcase, so yes, I should have emptied it. I didn’t. It’s still on the bed as I type this.

And lest you think I might sneak in a sense of accomplishment when I head upstairs in a few minutes to go to bed: don’t worry. I will simply move it onto the floor and add it to the to-do list for tomorrow.

Today I took the eldest to her fifth year well visit and we waited 45 minutes for the doctor. I wasted the time at home before and after the appointment by chatting with your babysitter, instead of using that expensive time to check items off my to-do list. While we chatted, I drank hot tea with milk and sugar, even though I’m pretty sure both of those things are bad for me.

After the sitter left, I had thought we would go to lunch with your dad but then he ended up too swamped with work, and honestly I didn’t really feel like eating out after the airport food we ate yesterday. So, instead, I scrounged up a lunch that didn’t require a grocery run: tuna salad and crackers (and an apple, pickle, and cheese) for you, carrots and almond butter for me.

During lunch, I texted a few friends to let them know we’re back in town and ask how they are. I was without cell service on vacation. I chatted on the phone with Ms. Ashley, both of us lamenting what we were not doing and mentioning what we should be doing.

We finished lunch and I let you color for a few minutes before quiet time began. The youngest surprised us by writing her name legibly.

I planned to mow the grass during quiet time this afternoon, and even slathered myself with SPF 50, changed my clothes, put on a visor and old sneaks, and filled the mower with gas. Then the mower engine didn’t sound right and kept banging and puffing out black smoke. It puttered out when I tried to force it to mow under those circumstances. I called your grandpa to ask for advice, and we decided I probably couldn’t fix it. I came inside, still covered in sunscreen, and drank another cup of tea and read my novel. Actually, I also registered you both for VBS, and registered myself for Lexington Poetry Month. I did not pay bills, though it’s the end of the month and they’re all waiting for my attention on the table.

After the youngest kept coming downstairs for unimportant reasons, and then began crying in bed when I told you to stay upstairs, I decided to load us in the car and accomplish at least one thing officially on my list. We went to Wilson’s Nursery to buy tomato and basil plants. It’s nearly half an hour away but I didn’t care. I packed a snack and waters for you, grabbed your sunglasses, and we left. I let my phone tell me how to get there so I didn’t have to think about it.

Then, because Wilson’s was having a Memorial Day Sale all week, I ended up buying ten vegetable plants, including peppers and cucumbers, three basil plants, and six mini succulents. I thought I would make a little succulent pot for our neighbors who just brought their preemie baby home from the hospital, and who can ever have too much basil?

We got home, and then walked over to our other neighbor-friends’ house and borrowed their mower. I was still determined to mow.

But first: garden.

You tried to help by getting garden rakes and shovels from the shed, but let’s face it: you’re just not that helpful and very likely to injure yourselves as the two of you maneuver a shovel with a handle as long as you are.

Your dad arrived home and got the mower running (by sheer force of will, it seems to me), and mowed half the yard while I was still transplanting and figuring out where to put ten veggie plants when we already have our raised beds pretty full of lettuce, broccoli, cabbage, beans, and baby blueberry bushes surrounded by carrots. I decided the hydrangea beds across the yard can each house a tomato plant. (The hydrangeas have turned a stunning magenta while we were away—who knew?—but wilted quite a bit in today’s heat. I hope they will recover when we water.)

I accidentally broke off a cucumber stem. I picked the green beans that have popped into existence in the week we’ve been gone. I weeded the herb bed. The oregano is now two feet tall and the thyme is circling the mint to win the award for most invasive herb we own. I pinched the smallest leaves of my new basil plants to stimulate growth. Your dad snipped off our leaf lettuce that is getting out of control, and we decided the grownups will eat salad for dinner. He sent you in with an armful of lettuce to put in the sink. I finished transplanting the succulents and tried to decide if the pot needs a bit of decoration before giving it away as a gift.

Seven o’clock was quickly approaching at this point, and we hadn’t eaten dinner. I ran inside to rinse the basil leaves I removed during transplanting, and I smushed a spider that crawled out of the sink’s lettuce.

Under the lettuce, the sink was full of the dirty dishes I did not wash today. Even the breakfast dishes were at the bottom of that pile.

While your dad watered the produce and baby trees and hydrangeas (and previous years’ Easter lilies, which seem to be blooming too), an AT&T salesman stopped by to try to sell us new internet service, even though he came to the door earlier in the day and I had told him ‘no’ once already.

I mowed the remaining half of the yard—and paused to chat with the neighbor and see how the baby is doing–and then mowed the part outside the fence while your dad prepped dinner. And fed you both dinner. I returned the mower.

Your dad was nearly finished with your bath by the time I sat down to eat my salad.

I joined in for bedtime routines of singing and praying and tucking-in, ran downstairs for the forgotten fuzzy blanket, gave permission for a final bathroom run.

And then I showered.

I started the day with a shower today, thinking I was off to a productive start. I ended the day with wet hair once again and don’t feel the least productive.

Because it’s too easy to judge productivity with the lists that didn’t get done.

We have two cucumber plants, two pepper plants, six tomato plants, three basil plants, three small pots of succulents to keep and one large to give away that we didn’t have before today. And our grass is mown. I checked in with friends and caught up a bit.

And when your dad turned on my iPad this evening—my special iPad for my hand-lettering and digital design work that seemed to go on the fritz and have severe hardware issues while we were away—well, he turned it on and miraculously it worked.

I feel like that’s something worth adding to my list of achievements for the day. Even if it had nothing to do with me.

Because I’m kind of thinking now, having typed up the day, that very few of my daily achievements have much to do with me anyway.

It’s all sacred, girls. These little moments.

It doesn’t matter what gets crossed off the list.

I haven’t looked at the list in hours. It got pushed to the back of the counter at some point earlier today and I haven’t grabbed it since.

I’m not complaining. Lists help keep me organized. I love making them. I love crossing things off of them.

But, y’all, lists aren’t life.

Love,

Your Momma