It’s a beautiful early July morning, and only two days before we’ll celebrate the Fourth of July here in the United States.

For me, this morning feels like the calm both before and after the storm.

Like many parts of this country, we’ve faced tricky weather around here lately, with more than enough rain and nearly constant wind. The trees surrounding our cabin have taken a beating, starting with a winter ice storm from which they have yet to recover.

Last night, I sat writing in our sunroom, enjoying the fresh scent of rain through a barely open window while lost in a story I’m working feverishly to finish. The sound of rain lulling me into that always sought after but too often elusive state of mind where the words flow freely from my mind through my fingers wasn’t the real-life shower falling just beyond the windows, but the meditative sound track playing through my noise canceling headphones. I’ve listened to that same track while writing all twelve of my books to date.

I only mention the headphones because—lost as I was in the fictional world I’ve devised through my imagination—I didn’t even hear the racket when something came crashing down in the real world. A huge branch fell, mere feet from the corner of the room where I sat writing. My daughter had to alert me to the near miss; shocked that I could be so oblivious to my surroundings.
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How often do we miss what’s going on around us while lost in our own thoughts?

Today, when I woke to a clear sky and a calm breeze, I decided it was the perfect morning for a peaceful cup of coffee on the dock. We expect another storm around here tomorrow, but it won’t be a weather event (I hope). The rest of our family will arrive for a few days of fun camaraderie, good food, and hopefully a campfire complete with marshmallows, chocolate, and graham crackers.

But I have more words to write, a menu to figure out, and groceries to buy before the festivities can begin. This is the lull before my next storm.

Beyond the scope of our planned family activities, there are plenty of other storms brewing. It’s all enough to threaten a person’s peace of mind, yet it’s important for us to deal with the tension we feel.

​As I gathered my fresh cup of coffee and a notebook to jot down pointers for the chapters I plan to write today, I headed outside and down the steps toward the shoreline, only to pull up short at the odd tilt to my battered copper pot. I usually plant flowers in it each summer. This year, all that’s growing in it is regrowth from last year because my flower planting was pretty sparse. Yesterday, I’d admired the way nature had stepped in where I’d failed to act, and I swear that pot was still upright. This morning, the base on which it’s anchored is crumbling, and the whole thing is at risk of collapse.
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I’ll have to move the pot, because my goal is to plant many more years’ worth of flowers in it in the future.
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Then, as I approached the dock itself, I was surprised to see that one of the supports my hubby had just placed a few days ago had already tipped over. The waves churned up in the stormy weather yesterday were probably the culprits. I had to decide whether to kick off my slides and venture into the water so I could re-brace the end of the dock. Stepping onto the unsupported dock wasn’t an option, as I might have damaged the frame.

Fine. While I hadn’t planned to get my feet wet at 6:45 in the morning, sometimes we have to do what it takes when tiny impediments stand in the way of our goals. Off came my slides and I dipped my toes into the water, delighted when the temperature was pleasant instead of jarring.

Then the shale beneath my feet gave way, and I had to fight to keep my balance lest I end up with muddy shale on the seat of my sweatpants, or tumble into the water.

Unbeknownst to me, there may have been a witness to my stumbling. Do you see the swirl right next to the dock? But I’m not worried. Fish will keep our secrets.
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Once the concrete block was back in place, I realized things had shifted enough that the dock ramp no longer touched it. But it would at least be there if the ramp dipped under my weight, so I held my breath and eased my way out onto the dock. I needed those quiet few minutes to enjoy my fresh coffee and contemplate the state of the world around me.

No one else was around, but I wasn’t alone. A large pelican, barely visible in the photo’s background below, bobbed on the gentle swells of the lake. He came no closer to me, but my presence didn’t disturb him enough to force him to leave, either. A second pelican swooped overhead, choosing not to land in our bay. I probably scared him off.
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Then a head popped out of the water, and I could see a small stick protruding from the little guy’s mouth. A beaver maybe? Whatever it was, it swam toward shore, but before I could turn my phone camera back on, it ducked below the surface again, still there but now out of sight.

I glimpsed the sleek spine of a fish, skimming right below the surface of the water, much closer to our dock.

By the time my coffee had cooled, the wind was picking up again and I could hear a dog barking from our cabin. She didn’t appreciate being left inside. My reprieve was over, yet those few minutes brought important things to mind.

• Even when things seem frustratingly disheartening in the outside world, creatures in nature continue to go about their business, undeterred by things beyond their control.
• No foundation is impervious to pressures, and all are at risk of collapsing if not properly protected.
• This creates an interesting dichotomy. How can we strike the right balance between the two?

 
We live in a great country, and I feel blessed to be planning a celebration of it for our family and friends, even though I dread that trip to the grocery store. I hope we can all take a few minutes in the days ahead to remind ourselves of how we might work together to strengthen this nation, instead of focusing on our differences or trying to gain power over others. Because just like that crumbling tree stump and unstable shale shoreline I encountered this morning, it doesn’t take much to tip things over.

​I hope you have the chance to enjoy a favorite food in the days ahead; to laugh with someone special; or to toss a beanbag in a friendly game under a warm sun while standing on a grassy, stable surface.

We should never forget how lucky we are to live here, nor can we afford to take our blessings for granted.

Happy Fourth of July! Celebrating alongside you, Kim

​This is our first Christmas as grandparents! Having a little one around brings back lots of memories from when our kids were young. Last night, as I was sewing the baby’s name on a Christmas stocking, my mind drifted back to one of his daddy’s early holiday seasons. The only thing our nearly three-year-old son asked Santa for that year was the Disney movie “101 Dalmatians”.
 
Back then, Disney would bring certain movies “out of the vault” for a limited time. You’d only find it on store shelves during those windows. Little Josh’s timing was off and the Dalmatians movie wasn’t currently available, so Santa was having a tough time finding that movie for him. As the elf assigned to help Santa find that perfect gift for our son’s third Christmas, I refused to give up.

​Help arrived from an unexpected source that year. My youngest brother had moved to Ohio for work and he was dating someone we hadn’t met yet. As luck would have it, the young woman collected Disney movies. Not only did she have an impressive collection, she generously offered to help Santa out so he wouldn’t disappoint Joshua.
 
Now, nearly any movie you want to watch is available with the click of a few buttons—and maybe a few dollars—to stream directly into your living room. But this was long before streaming. This desperate elf / momma found her brother’s friend’s offer of a movie from her personal collection to be very generous indeed.
 
I still remember Joshua standing in front of my parent’s picture window, his little feet balancing on the heat register while he gripped the narrow trim, his eyes searching the sky for any sign of Santa Claus.

​Joshua thought he heard a sound on the roof, and when the knock at the door came, his excitement edged toward terror as the big guy himself strolled into Grandma and Grandpa’s house. It helped that Santa brought the movie he’d asked for, but only a little. 

​My brother’s new girlfriend had hand delivered her movie to Santa Claus before he swung by the house to say hello to Joshua, and she’s been back with us for the holidays almost every December in the twenty-six years since that first Christmas.
 
Her willingness to help us out was an excellent sign, and she’s been an amazing sister-in-law and aunt  ever since. Oh… and an awesome wife to my brother, too!
 
Thank you, Joey, for making a little boy’s Santa wish come true.
 
Love, Santa’s elf / aka Joshua’s mom

​Did you go through a scrapbooking phase like I did? In the mid-nineties, when we were having our first of three kids, I stocked up on all the supplies and spent fun weekends with girlfriends, working on our books and enjoying the winter days at a lodge in Minnesota.
 
But I think I got one thing wrong. Like most new moms, I tried to do too much.
 
The first book I made for our oldest is so thick the binders can hardly hold it together, and it only captured his first year! Over the next few years, I continued building these keepsake books, and admittedly they got a little smaller each time, but my drive to “do it all” led to burnout. I’ve done little scrapbooking since.
 
My mom didn’t normally scrapbook, however, she spent countless nights leading up to Christmas 2000, creating three books: one for me and one for each of my two brothers. My book is thick, but she captured highlights from the first 34 years of my life on those pages. As a bonus, the first few pages are all about our great-grandparents, grandparents, and other relatives that are now long gone. She included photographs I’d never seen before.

​Mom took the time to handwrite so many important snippets of our history on those pages. Her own handwriting on every page makes this book even more priceless to me. 

​Here is a picture of part of one page in the book she created for me. The one of a little girl in the lap of a woman is actually me at two years old and my Great Aunt Mary. I included a photocopy of this picture on the Author Bio page of my holiday novel, "Capturing Wishes". The next page in my scrapbook included a quick summary of what early Christmases looked like for Mom (Linda) as a child. She grew up with three sisters and her mother was Onie Johnson (sister to Aunt Mary Nierling):

“The Johnsons spent every Christmas with the Nierlings. They would have tuna hotdish on Christmas Eve at home, then go to Aunt Mary’s. Each of the kids would have their own corner where Santa would leave their gift. After opening all the gifts, everyone would go to Midnight Mass, then back to Aunt Mary’s for a huge breakfast. On Christmas morning, Onie would shorten new Christmas dresses for all four girls. Linda’s most memorable gift was a Toni Doll and lots of clothes made by Onie, who had stayed up night after night—sewing after all were in bed. We would join all our cousins at Aunt Mary’s for a big turkey dinner and play with all our new games!” 

​This brief paragraph conjures up so many fun, vivid images in my mind. I can just picture my dear grandmother, hunched over an old Singer sewing machine, working on doll clothes and new dresses for her four young daughters. I spent time at Aunt Mary’s house when I was young, and I wonder which corner was assigned to my mom.
 
Revisiting my scrapbook this morning has inspired me to, maybe, pull out my old “work in process” books for our three kids during the new year. I’d be more selective in the pictures I include, and spend more time on the “stories” behind the images, including names, so when someone runs across those pictures in the years to come, they won’t just be looking at nameless faces.
 
These days, we take countless snapshots with the phones that are almost constantly in our hands. But how many of those do we bother to convert from a digital image, so easily lost, into something more tangible that could tell our stories to future generations?
 
Thank you, Mom, for taking so much time during those fall and winter evenings, twenty-two years ago, to record our stories. It is a gift I’ll treasure forever.