I’ve got that old feeling.

The one that comes from very little sleep.

I pulled myself out of bed yesterday morning, my bones heavy with fatigue and started on the to-do list I’d been writing in my head for the past few hours.

Check temperatures. Lucille had Tylenol last, Eliza Advil.
Give medicine.
Shower?
Call preschool, tell them we won’t be there for the first day.
Call friend who was to take care of Lucille.
Go to doctor.

It all started around 2:30 a.m. “My throat hurts when I drink mama,” Eliza said standing at the bottom of the stairs. She was shivering and she had a temperature of 103. Advil.

By 4:30 a.m. Lucille had made her way to my side of the bed. “I wanna lay witch you mama,” she said. She was hot to the touch. Temperature: 102.8. Tylenol.

They tossed, turned and finally fell asleep, sweating out their fevers. When I woke up at 7:15 a.m. they were sprawled across our bed (Seth retreated hours before to Lucille’s bed). I took their temperatures while they slept. Eliza was cycling up, Lucille down. Or was it the other way around? I wiggled out of bed. Eliza was awake but didn’t move, which I knew meant she felt pretty bad.

I worked my way down my mental list and finally broke it to Eliza that she’d have to miss her first day of preschool this year.

“It’s okay mama,” she said. “I’ll go tomorrow. I don’t feel like going to school.”

There was no whining, no complaining. Just cold juice in metal cups, coffee, jammies off, clothes on and a silent agreement among the three of us that, yes, we should go to the doctor.

When we arrived, my favorite doctor was there, the one I like to think saved my life. She told me once, “I think you have meningitis. Go to the hospital. Go now.” I did as she said. She was right.

Yesterday morning, she called us back, took vitals and looked in Eliza’s mouth.

“That is strep,” she said. “We’ll swab just to make sure but that’s what it is.”

She moved on to Lucille who opened her mouth without fuss. “Oh, and you are only about a day behind your sister,” she said. “She’s got it too.”

As she looked my little girls over I knew they were in good hands. The doctor called in antibiotics as I sipped my coffee and tried to keep Lucille from turning on and off again the exam table, the lamp beside it.

Watching them, I couldn’t help but think that I spent years of my life feeling this tired, this depleted.

Eliza wasn’t a sleeper and by the time she was only waking a few times a night we’d had Lucille and it felt as though we were up all night, every night. I remember dreading going to bed because I never knew what would come. And often, it was just a rough and tumble ride from midnight to 6 a.m. when I’d gladly get out of bed just to get off the sleep-wake cycle. I spent my days in a fog, on a steady stream of caffeine. I didn’t eat well and ran on raw adrenaline until I didn’t have anything left.

Now, most nights, I sleep. I don’t walk through my days stone-cold exhausted. Having a little distance from all those sleepless nights makes me realize just how intense our lives were for a few years. This realization helped me put into perspective two kids with strep throat. Medicine, popsicles. We will sleep again.

But the feeling of exhaustion was so familiar yesterday morning that it was tempting to move through the day like I had so many other days, poorly fed and at capacity. It was tempting to slip into that comfortable place of neglecting what I needed in the wake of a crisis.

Then I did a mental check of a different kind. They are being taken care of, I thought. What do you need? Did you eat this morning? Drink water? I had only had coffee.

After a spin around Target, two doses of antibiotics and the saving grace of a Dora the Explorer DVD, I sat down to a meal that I made just for me. I took my vitamins. I drank a lot of water. I quickly moved myself up from the bottom of the list.

Today, I turn 35. Hopefully I’ll arrive squarely in my mid-thirties with some amount of grace. And, I like to think I’m learning a few things the older I get.

Yesterday I went to the grocery store for a few things and you know how that can be. But on this trip I didn’t come home with a $12 pint of huckleberries or a $25 bottle of shampoo. I got what I needed with my two children writhing in and out of the cart.

Bananas. Yogurt. Oatmeal. Butter.

My dad, Eliza and me

As I packed my groceries into my car, I opened the bottle of Gain just to get a whiff. It smelled like my Dad. The Palmolive, my grandmother’s kitchen.

Standing in the Safeway parking lot all I could think was how much I miss them.

My grandmother and Eliza

But, I suppose, it’s not worth getting into all that right now.

I love where I live and I do not regret the decisions that brought me here but there are days that if I could wish myself anywhere in the world, I would wish to be standing on my grandmother’s driveway, my bare feet burning in the August heat. I would walk up the smooth brick steps to her back door, listen to the screen door groan as I pull it open and step into the relative cool of her kitchen. I would eat a livermush sandwich with mustard on white bread and drink her cold, sweet tea. I would hear her feet sweep purposefully across the linoleum. I would even settle in and watch Fox News with her, that’s how bad I miss her some days.

Other days I would trade nearly anything to be riding shotgun with my dad on some curvy mountain road. I would listen as he told me the history of this dam, that lake, how the next town finally got electricity way back when. I would listen to him tell stories of when I was little, when he was little, when we lived just the two of us. I would drink a Cheerwine and he would drive slowly just as his father did. We would talk money or politics and I would feel as safe as a person can.

But I can’t wish myself across the miles. And my children don’t seem to want to let me talk on the phone much these days. So I catch the scent of where I’m from where I can and sometimes it’s in a bottle of Palmolive, a jug of Gain.

At the beginning of this summer I had one goal, basic and simple. I wanted to have fun.

Last summer was decidedly not fun. We managed to pull off some elements of summer last year but afternoon dips in the river and walks around the block did not a summer make. Taking care of two children each day in the wake of meningitis was enough of a challenge that the days were few that I could take in a summer ritual like going to the swimming pool or biking to the baseball game.

So as the weather warmed this spring and the June rains fell I wanted to focus on having fun and to do it exceedingly well.

As August unfolds all around us, my children are sleeping, sandy and sticky. Their curls have blond tips and their backs are brown with white stripes. And they fall into naps tired and happy, almost every day. Some days we hit the splash park in the morning, the river in the afternoon. And the burrito store in between. We’ve eaten ice cream, dug trenches on the banks of the Clark Fork River and thrown rocks in the Blackfoot. We’ve climbed rocks and slipped into big mountain lakes by way of a canoe floating past white lotus flowers. We’ve grown vegetables, stayed up late to watch movies and eat popcorn at the outdoor cinema near our house. We’ve filled our house with people and, yes, we have had fun.

This idea of doing one thing and doing it well is a new concept for me. I know I have Type-A leanings. I can be an organization junkie, a neat ninny when it comes to the house, the car. I can over achieve with the best of them. But for the past year or so I’ve really been trying not to. I don’t mean that I’ve put on my giving up on life pants and started leaving the dishes in the sink for a week, I just mean I’ve started to think about things a little differently. Maybe it’s the quality over quantity argument or maybe I just got so damned tired of my cell phone ringing that I’ve put it on vibrate and only answer it when I have the time to actually talk to someone.

In May I quit my job of five years in part because my life as an employee, a freelancer and a mama of two tiny children was leaving me feeling a little stretched thin. There was a time when I became energized by multi-tasking, by juggling one more ball. Then, one day, I was out of energy. No matter how far I dug to try and tap the well of I can do it! I couldn’t. I didn’t want to anymore.

There is a sign above the sink in the house where I take yoga. It says: I am washing dishes. I am thankful to be washing dishes. My yoga teacher says: Breathe in. I am aware that I am breathing in. Breathe out. I am aware that I am breathing out. Lately, I am aspiring to these things.

I am thankful to be washing the dishes.

Sometimes I have to quiet my mind from wandering down the path of what’s the next big thing. And it is a far greater challenge for me than answering phone calls, meeting ad or copy deadlines and making sure everyone has on their snow boots. All of that, and at once, actually comes pretty easy.

I think I’ve always wondered what the slowing down would feel like. I was always a little scared to find out. Would there be something in the savoring to sustain me? Am I patient enough to sit with uncomfortable silences? What would I find at the end of every deep exhalation? Would it be enough?

Turns out, it’s more than enough. It’s what my grandmother calls a great plenty.

What was that Steinbeck quote?

“I’m in love with Montana. For other states I have admiration, respect, recognition, even some affection. But with Montana it is love. And it’s difficult to analyze love when you’re in it.”

I used to have this quote thumb-tacked to my dorm room wall in South Carolina after I’d lived in Montana and wanted desperately to come back.

And it’s still true. I am in love.

And, yes, it’s hard to analyze it when you’re in it.

But let’s try.

This week, Eliza turned four and we had a “Spiderman makes me feel good” birthday party. Our house was filled, and I mean filled, with all the people we love. There was a party on the front porch, a party in the backyard and one in between, in the kitchen.

We celebrated our little curly-haired, head-strong, tie-dye-wearing four-year-old. She celebrated her new skateboards and a chocolate on chocolate cake.

As I walked through our packed house from one end to the other Wednesday night I realized again and for the thousandth time, that having my family surrounded by and my house full of smart, creative people in a place I love is what I’ve always wanted.

Missoula is not my hometown.

It’s a place that I chose a while back. I suppose, as they say, it chose me. When I came here I was 19, having never really been too far from where I grew up. Somehow, from a description in a newsprint booklet, I ended up here.

I remember thinking when I first came here that the place was crawling with writers. And I wanted to be one of them. It was also full of people who knew each other. They’d say hello on the street, stop and ask each other how they’d been. I wanted to know these people too.

I lived here for a few short months in the winter of 1996. Then I went home to South Carolina. I graduated college. I lived for two years in another mountain town that almost snagged me. I moved to another coast. I somehow got really, really lucky and ended up back in Missoula.

Or, near Missoula.

When I first came back to Montana in the late fall of 2001 Seth and I lived 30 miles east of town in a vacation rental on Rock Creek. A few months later we bought a house on five acres of tall grass with broken down fences 25 miles north of Missoula in Arlee. Though our work and most of our friends were in Missoula, it wasn’t until last summer that we actually moved here.

I always thought there was no difference in living a little ways outside of town and living in the heart of it.

There is, I’ve found. But what’s more important, though, is who we surround ourselves with.

On Eliza’s birthday our house was filled with people who create. There were two filmmakers, a least one potter, one carpenter who could build a house from top to bottom in record time, one who could trim it out beautifully while spouting economic theory and another who could make pretty much anything in it out of concrete. There were four nonfiction writers, one poet, a photographer, a painter who should probably quit his day job and do nothing but put his brushes to canvas, and a woman who turns everything she touches into art.

These are our people. These are our neighbors – a concept that has taken on a new and powerful meaning for me in the last year. These are the faces my daughters will remember from their childhood. My children will fall asleep to the whispers of their conversations.

Missoula is not a place to settle if you are looking to strike it rich. It’s not a place to come if you want to become famous, although, I suppose, that’s not entirely true. But it is a place where people will walk your grocery cart back to the store for you, a place where people will bring your four-year-old handmade shirts, wooden yo-yos and basketballin’ shorts. They’ll sling Spiderman webs with her and sing her happy birthday.

I’m pretty sure all of us that have lived here (or near here) for a while have questioned whether living here is worth the low wages, the constant ducking and weaving of financial curve balls, the long gray winters, the limited professional opportunities. But when I see my community perched on my front porch, leaning in my kitchen, laughing in my backyard, I know, again, that it is.

It reminds me of print my friend Jess has hanging in her kitchen. It says: “There are things you do because they feel right & they may make no sense & they may make no money & it may be the real reason we are here: to love each other & to eat each other’s cooking & say it was good.”

Whoever wrote that must have spent a little time in Missoula.

I have a little problem. And it comes in a red can.

It’s not a problem, I suppose. But maybe that’s what all addicts say.

My grandmother, who smoked cigarettes for the better part of 40 years, used to say it was the only bad thing she ever did. A life-long Southern Baptist who never had a drink of alcohol in her life, she justified her smoking through one open-heart surgery, then another nearly 20 years later. It was only after that valve replacement that she gave up her cigarettes. While she was in the hospital, chest cracked wide, I dumped the last few cigarettes from her only remaining pack into the toilet. I’d wanted to do that for 15 years.

Girlies eating 100% juice popscicles.

My addiction isn’t as serious but it’s not that healthy either. I’m not a smoker, after living with several the concept was never even one bit tempting. I don’t drink too much alcohol but I do, every day, drink a Coke. And I do show other signs of addictive behavior. I hide it from certain people. (If I’m drinking a Coke in front you, know that I think you are free from judgment and that I’m pretty comfortable with you. You are one of the inner circle.) I justify my behavior. And I think I can quit at any time.

There is something about the sweet cola taste, the burn as it hits my throat mid-afternoon that I have come to love. I know sodas are bad for you. I’ve read Omnivore’s Dilema, in which Michael Pollen warns against high fructose corn syrup. I know sodas are awful for my teeth, my body in general. And still, almost every day, I have one. Just one. (Justifying!) In a can. A small 7.5 ounce can.

And in that can there is nothing remotely healthy. There are 25 grams of sugar, 25 grams of carbohydrates and no protein. High fructose corn syrup is the second ingredient followed by caramel color, phosphoric acid (yikes), natural flavors (seriously?) and caffeine. Like I said, nothing redeemable. But still, I drink it.

I don’t watch my weight in the sense that I have absolutely no idea how much I weigh at any given point. I assume it’s between a ten-pound range and I’m fine with that, though I never actually check. I get lots of exercise, I eat well. And I drink Coke. I don’t drink diet Coke or caffeine free Coke, I drink the real deal, red can Coke. And I know I would probably lose a few pounds if I gave up my can-a-day habit.

Over the years I’ve tried stop. And I have for months and even years at a time. Then something sends me back. Like having tiny babies that don’t sleep and needing an afternoon pick-me-up. Or getting meningitis and having the nurse bring in a cold can of Coke. How was I to say no?

I don’t have a sweet tooth. I don’t love cake or chocolate. I could do without both. I don’t really eat ice cream that often unless I’m stuck with a cone of it in blue bubble gum flavor dripping down my wrist because Eliza has jettisoned it and left me to deal. I prefer graham crackers to chocolate chip cookies and would much rather have something made of onions or strong cheese to a sweet treat any day. Maybe that’s because I have my afternoon Coke to take care of even the smallest sugar craving I might have.

I once admitted my problem to my naturopath.

“Do you eat fast food?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “Not often.”

“Do you smoke? Drink too much?”

“No,” I said.

“Do you eat healthy foods? Drink enough water?”

“Yes,” I said. “Mostly.”

“Then I wouldn’t worry about it,” she said. “You’re not drinking enough of it to really cause any problems. Everyone has their vices and there are so many that are so much worse than a little soda.”

This is why I like her. In one breath she can tell me I’m not taking enough fish oil, that ovulation is a time to open up, create and nurture and in the next tell me that a little Coke never killed anybody.

She asked me once if it was the sugar I was craving. I told her that I didn’t think so. The caffeine, she asked. No, not that either. It’s because my grandmother used to give it to me when I had an upset stomach, I told her. It’s because there is nothing better on a hot Southern, summer day than a cold fountain Coke from the store up the street from my grandmother’s house. It’s a part of how I grew up. It’s imbedded in my memory somewhere with sweet tea and banana pudding. And it probably won’t ever go away.

So the other day when Eliza had taken an empty Coke can out of the recycling, filled it with water and walked around the back yard saying, “Look mama I’m drinking soda,” I nearly had a heart attack.

“Oh, baby, soda isn’t good for you. Let’s not pretend with soda,” I said.

“Because it’s a mommy drink?” she said.

Ah! So she associates it with me! Not the jug after jug of water I drink everyday, not the fruit-filled smoothies I make in the mornings, not the stupidly expensive 100 percent fruit juice I buy by the case but these little red cans. It’s a mommy drink.

She’s imitating me a lot lately. She wears tennis shoes and calls them her running shoes, she’s even started putting a certain shirt and pair of shorts saying they are her running clothes. She watches closely and takes her cues from me.

Even when it comes to Coke.

So here I am at a crossroads. Do I have to give up something I love so that my three-year-old won’t follow in my same high fructose corn syrup laden steps? Do I let a fond piece of my childhood spill into hers?

The bottom line is I don’t really want her to drink soda just as my grandmother didn’t want me to take up smoking. I want Eliza to make a better choice than I do but then, I suppose, I have to show her the better choice.

Is it one of those times where I choose my tiny family over the family I grew up with? Is it one of those times where I commit to the life in front of me instead of the one that’s deep in my memory, where I do what’s right by my little girl knowing my grandmother would do the same thing?

I think so.

Saturday, Seth and I started hiking up a drainage in the Mission mountains at 7:30 a.m. It was our sixth wedding anniversary. The trail was steep and familiar and we moved slowly as Eliza and Lucille lay sleeping at the house of dear friends who’d agreed to watch them so we could have a kid-free night and day. Around 9 a.m. we came out of the trees and onto a rocky alpine ridge. As I stood looking at the curved mountain meadows to either side, the jagged outline of Graywolf Peak, the tiny lakes that had just barely begun to thaw, I thought about how in our modern lives there are so few opportunities to touch something ancient.

Birth. Mountains. Death. Ocean.

To experience these things we place our hands, even if for a moment, on that place inside us that needs to connect with something primal.

It got me thinking about the choices we make: where we live, how we treat ourselves, those in our lives and how they treat us. I thought about how it is okay to choose to make something a part of your life just because it’s beautiful, just because it fulfills in you some unexplainable need.

It’s important to be surrounded by beauty.

I found myself saying all of this to Seth.

This idea of beauty is why we lived in Arlee for so long. It’s in the seasons laid bare across a landscape that could be harsh and lonely, awake and vibrant but always honest. It’s in raising your eyes and looking at something inspiring every time you open the door. It’s in the constant, grounding calm of mountains in the distance. It’s why it was so hard to answer when people would ask why we lived so far out of town. It’s why we let ourselves talk of going back.

This beauty was in training and running the Missoula marathon without the self-flagellation that has existed for me when I’ve run races before. I knew I could run the distance but, this time, I wanted to foster a sense of gentle acceptance about my body and abilities. I wanted to take it easy on myself. I wanted to see if I could accomplish this goal from a place of love.

So when I felt like I was pushing it just a little too far, instead of pushing farther like I would have in the past, I took a break. I skipped a 20-mile training run. I iced, I massaged, I took naps. I listened to my body, I fed it well and often, and the experience fed me in so many meaningful ways. Seeing my body through a lens of gratitude rather than through one of judgment is where I found true beauty in the experience.

This beauty is in the people with whom we choose to spend our time, it in the community that surrounds our children. It’s in fostering deep friendships based on love, common experience and joy. It’s in giving space to those friendships that need it and coming back a few years later to a richer, more complete connection. It’s in letting fall away toxic encounters, bald competition and grown-up games. It’s being willing to let the relationships that cultivated those things fall away too.

It’s in reading something from one woman to another about struggle and survival, forgiveness and reaching. It’s knowing when to stop and read it again. And again.

This kind of beauty is in the choosing. And Saturday, in the Missions with the man I married six years ago while looking at those very mountains, it was everywhere I laid my eyes.

As a mother I know I’m supposed to kiss the owies, put the four hundredth bandaid of the day on dirty, sticky fingers and serve the oatmeal with strawberries in the purple bowl along with the Elmo fork. I know I’m supposed to read the cat book at least three times before bed, help Eliza write her name, Lucille’s name, our dog Imogene’s name and not protest when bath time turns into a bathroom soaking, all out water fight. These are things every mother does: the ass kicking, the kung fu, the back flips. But in summer in Montana we mamas do all this while hiking mountain trails, swimming in creeks and sleeping outside.

It’s a part of the negotiation, I’m finding, to raise children here. Even those of us who come from somewhere else spend our summers gently removing hooks from the mouths of rainbow trout, floating rivers, starting fires and reading our children to sleep by the light of head lamp looking at the stars through the roof of our tent.

It’s one thing to live in Montana it’s another wholly to be raising little Montanans.

I grew up in a subdivision in South Carolina. I was in a sorority. Can you tell where this is headed? I didn’t exactly camp growing up. I wasn’t a girl scout. I didn’t learn how to start a fire without matches. I went to the mall, to the movies, to friend’s houses who didn’t camp either. I am not begrudging the way I grew up, I’m just saying Laura Ingles Wilder I was not.

I went hiking for the first time in high school, fell in love with the North Carolina mountains and by the time I was in college was spending a few weekends a month there.

I was timid still.

I had a deep and visceral fear of snakes and preferred campgrounds to backpacking. But I got it, that taste of something sweet and distant, when you are in the woods, on a trail, by a cold mountain lake. My desire to be there outweighed my fears of what could be hidden under the next rock and I eventually worked through them. I started carrying my stuff on my back, finally learned to light a Whisperlite camp stove and set out for places I could only get to by foot.

By the time I got to Montana I thought I was pretty hardy. Then Seth and I bought a house at the base of the Mission Mountains and starting venturing into them with regularity. Seth, who probably did learn to start a fire without matches when he was 10 or something, was completely comfortable. He’d been in the woods with a water bottle in a duct tape sling over his shoulder since he could remember. There are pictures to prove it. I was a little hesitant because in the Missions there always seemed to be something missing for me. Namely, a trail. We spent so many hours bushwhacking up the sides of mountains only to do it all again coming down. The payoff at the top was always worth it but my legs may never forget those climbs.

I wouldn’t trade those days in the mountains for anything. The faint trail we broke in those days is littered with my old fears. And I am so glad.

Now when Eliza asks can we climb that hill, can we swim today, can we go fishing. I can say yes, yes and yes. The landscape of her childhood will be mountain peaks and yellow-green grass covered hillsides. She’ll know where to find the trail and how to start the fire. And I hope it’s because she saw her mama do it often, Montana style.

When I cracked an inside joke around mile 23 I think my friend Sarah knew I was not only going to be fine but that was going to finish this marathon smiling.

I had picked her up a mile or so before. She was jumping up and down, smiling and cheering for me.

“Woohoo Savage!” she said.

I took my headphones off long enough to hug her and say, “Let’s get her done, Richey!”

“Let’s do it!” she said. We were both pretty excited. I was feeling strong, we’d connected at the spot we’d planned the on the day before when she said she’d be happy to hop in the last leg of the race and run with me. There aren’t many people I’d want to see at mile 22 of a marathon but Sarah Richey, she’s one of them. She’s top notch.



We met years ago when she was the elusive girlfriend of our friend Dave. She’s in Colorado, he’d say. She’s teaching a course in Utah. She always seemed to NOT be in Missoula. We used to joke that he was making her up, creating her out of some badass outdoor fantasy. Turns out she was not only real, she was real deal. Big smile, always up for adventure, she’s now married to Dave and after years of living way to far away from each other, we all live on the same side of town.

When I saw her on Sunday, water bottle in hand, ready to jump in a run the last four miles of the marathon with me I was about as happy to see her as I had been a few years ago when she I watched her lead us to an opening in a slot canyon in Utah. We’d been walking sideways to fit through the water carved sandstone and I, feeling claustrophobic at my core, dug deep not to lose it. When the canyon inevitably widened and I saw Richey silouhetted against the red rock I knew I could follow this girl anywhere, that when things got tough emotionally or otherwise, I wanted her on my team.

So Sunday, I settled in to run the last four miles of the marathon with Richey at my side.

I told her Robert Earl Keen was playing on my ipod.

Dan and Margarita
were swayin’ side by side
I heard they were divorcin’
But I guess they let it slide
And I wished I had some money with
which to buy a round

I wished I’d cashed my paycheck
Before I came to town
But I reached into my pocket
Found three twenties and a ten
It feels so good feelin’ good again

I love Keen’s proper grammar in that song but Richey knew that because we’ve been listening to him for years. I told her when Steve Earle came on. Then Eminem.

You better lose yourself in the music, the moment
You own it, you better never let it go go
You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow
This opportunity comes once in a lifetime yo

I think I even said out loud, I love Slim Shady. Which I do, and through all of this Richey just laughed. And ran.

Just before mile 24 I saw my friend Nici in her new running skirt, two bonneted children tucked in to her stroller. They were ready to run. Richey, Nici, Margot, Ruby and I rounded Bonner Park together. What I had thought would be the most grueling part of the run wasn’t. I was almost there and with very definition of friendship on either side of me.

It had been a good race. Hay boxes (you may call them bales, I call them boxes) at mile three in Frenchtown reminded me of the summer Seth and I lived with our friends Jess and Mark outside Eugene. Jess said it looked like the country grass was waving at her that summer. I thought of her as I passed fields of hay and sprinklers as the sun came up over the mountains. I noticed a few times that morning that I was smiling as we made our way down the rural road that would lead us all to Missoula. When we rounded the first turn of the race around mile 10 I was getting hot and my foot and hip were starting to hurt. We crossed the Clark Fork River and I could hear people starting to complain. I turned my iPod up and listened to Michael Franti.

And you don’t stop
And you don’t quit
And you don’t stop
And you don’t quit
Everybody ona move
La la la

At eleven or so miles we started to climb the one big hill in the marathon. I put my head down listened to Ira Glass mumble on about Barbados and Jamacia thinking screwed economy or not, I’d take a sandy beach right about then. When we got to the bottom of the hill I knew I was getting tired and it was time to, as Seth says, screw my lid on tight.

Back to music on the iPod, I started running through every sprinkler we passed. And there were many. I only remember trying to keep one foot in front of the other at this point, glad that my feet were feeling a little numb. I ate gel, I drank water. I carried handfuls of ice that someone generously put out in a cooler on the curb for runners to grab. I turned left, saw the Hawthorne school and realized I was at mile 20. Somehow, I got a second wind. Just a 10k to go. And people started lining the streets to cheer for all of us.
When I saw Keila and Brock at mile 21 I was so excited to see someone I knew I started clapping too. My legs were numb by this time too but my spirit was doing cheerleading jumps from seventh grade. And I knew I was only a mile or so from Richey.

Nici ducked out as we left Bonner Park and Richey and I kept running. We passed Dru around mile 25 and all I could do was smile and wave. A half a mile later we passed Casey and Richard’s house. They were on the porch cheering with noise makers. This was where I’d given myself permission to fall apart, to start sobbing and let the flood of all that this marathon meant come down but all I could was smile.

Richey pinched me on the ass and said, “Go cross that bridge, Savage! You got this!”

I waved to her and Dave made the last turn onto the Higgins Bridge where, it seemed, half of the town was waiting to cheer us on. When I ran under the balloons, across the finish line to the sweet sound of Michael Franti, serenading me and only me, all I wanted to do was celebrate.

The hay is in the barn.

Or at least that’s what our coach says.

We’ve trained since March, we’re four days away from running a marathon and we’re ready. The hay is in the barn, he says.

Our neighbor in Arlee, a life-long ranch woman, told me once when I offered to help her with the lunch she was preparing for 30 or so people, “Oh, honey, I ‘bout got it licked!”

This is one of those things I love about Montana. The sayings.

People keep asking me if I’m ready, nervous, excited. And the answer is yes. At any point during the day I’m one of those things or all of them at once.

In the days before I had Lucille I found it hard to write about her impending birth and I’m finding it hard now to write about how I’m feeling about this marathon.

If I were to write I’d tell you that I am nervous because I know marathons are painful. I’m a little scared that I’m ten years away from having run my last marathon and I know some things have changed. I’d tell you that I can’t drive over the Higgins Bridge where the finish line will be without getting a little weepy. I’d tell you that I’m taking my hat around to have friends sign it, just like a yearbook. I’d tell you that I’m going to write Eliza’s name on one arm, Lucille’s on the other and Seth’s across my heart. I’m also going to write Pre on the inside of my hand. I’d tell you that I just might watch some old footage of Pre before the race. I’d tell you that I’m interested to see what these years have taught me, interested to know what it will feel like, with birthing now a part of my story, when I think I can’t run one more step but do. I’m interested in what my reaction will be when it’s all over.

I’d tell you I feel as though there’s nothing left to say, nothing left to do but line up and run.

Nothing but eat, of course. As you may know marathon training involves three weeks at the end called tapering. Tapering is a bit maddening because you cut back on running just when your body is in peak condition. You want to run. But you can’t or you risk not being able to run the race you want to on marathon day. So you are left with a few options. You eat, you fret, you load your iPod.

My eating habits this week have resembled that of the Very Hungary Caterpillar. You know the children’s book? On Saturday he ate through one piece of chocolate cake, one ice cream cone, one pickle, one slice of Swiss cheese, one slice of salami, one lollipop, one piece of cherry pie, one sausage, one cupcake and one slice of watermelon.

I think I have that little caterpillar beat. On Tuesday I ate two eggs, four slices of bacon, a protein smoothie, a turkey-cheese-tomato sandwich with chips, a protein bar, yogurt, a heap of pasta with meat sauce, one piece of cake and ice cream. Combine this with what feels like gallons of water and Gatorade and this is what this week has been about. And just like that little caterpillar, I’m still hungry. My body needs calories. And I’m trying to help satiate it one plateful at a time.

In between eating like a sixteen-year-old boy and fretting about every little thing from will I wear a long-sleeved shirt or not the morning of the race, the other thing I seem to have time for is searching iTunes for music. Michael Franti, that beautiful six-foot-six dreadlocked man, is the clear front runner on my iTouch, uNOtouch. But I might need more than Michael to get me across the finish line. I’m entertaining the thought of buying some new music for those last grueling miles. Eminem is a possibility. Nelly too. Maybe a little Gwen Stefani. This is stuff Seth would rather die than listen to but, you know, Nelly has a beat.

If I were going to write about the marathon, these are the things I would tell you. I would tell you I’m eating, I’m dinking around with my iPod, taking the kids to the swimming pool and thinking about the marathon course. I would tell you I am nervous and excited but, above all, ready.

I would tell you I know the hay is in the barn and come mid-morning on Sunday, I’ll think about Carol Sue, our rancher neighbor when I ‘bout have it licked.

I saw a cartoon in the New Yorker this week that made me laugh. It was a of a woman driver, clearly frazzled, with three kids in car seats behind her. The bumper sticker on her minivan said, “I’d rather be working.”

I have been that mother in the car with two kids in car seats gripping the steering wheel, doing deep breathing exercises just trying to get to somewhere. I get it, I thought. Yes, there are days I’d rather be answering emails, coming up with tag lines for ads, writing a communication plan — the “work” I’ve done for years. But as I stood there reading the cartoon again, I thought, hey, wait a second. If that woman is taking care of three kids who are young enough to still be in car seats, no one is working harder than she is.

It is the New Yorker, after all, who knows, that irony may be the whole point of the cartoon because that magazine is nothing if not ironic. But that cartoon got me thinking.

In April I quit my job of five years doing communications work for a nonprofit organization in Missoula. I love that nonprofit and had explored almost every scheduling option while working there: full-time on-site, half-time from home, quarter time on-site, quarter time from home. I even worked a few years completely from home. It all ebbed a flowed based on where I was with childcare, where I happened to be living and what seemed possible. My boss was amazingly flexible and that’s how I was able to stay so long. I left because it seemed time to try something else.

Now, instead of having one full-time job (being the primary caregiver to my two young children), one half-time job (at the nonprofit) and another half-time (at least) job freelance writing, I take care of my children and I write. It all feels more manageable.

Except on the days when it doesn’t. The days when I answer what seems like 5,000 questions about Spiderman, his abilities, his motives and if he’s a boy or a girl. The days I might pull out my hair if Lucille takes her clothes off one more time before we are headed out the door. The days when I have to remember that I have master’s degree in something that I dearly love and spend what feels like so little time doing. The days when the laundry is stacked to the ceiling and I finally get it folded then someone comes along to dig through the basket to find that one shirt they can’t live without and it all falls into a heap on the floor. The days when all I want to do is lock myself in a room with nothing but New Yorkers and all the books I’ve bought but not read in the past four years and read until my eyes hurt.

These are the days when I hate my full-time job. When I question if my children wouldn’t be better off in full-time care with someone else. On these days I wonder if I’m really cut out for this mothering thing at all.

And of course it’s on these days that I pass Perfect Mom at the grocery store. Her two daughters are in matching Hanna Anderson dresses with freshly combed hair and cute pigtails. She never raises her voice and always seems to want to have fun! She’s even wearing a little skirt and a short brimmed hat. I’m wearing my running shoes, an old pair of shorts and a baggy pink (I’m being serious!) shirt. Eliza has on her basketballin’ clothes complete with baby blue nylon shorts, a red and pink jersey, her Spiderman hat (on backwards!) and her light up Spiderman shoes on the wrong feet. Lucille is wearing a necklace with two bloodshot eyeballs hanging from it. Neither has had her hair combed in days. I’m tired. I’m grumpy and my hair looks like Katie Couric after the bad haircut I got the other day.

I do not look like I want to have fun.

At the grocery store, Perfect Mom waves, I wave – through gritted teeth – and I vow to shower before again heading back out into the world.

The truth of it is I know I am lucky to be in this spot. I get to work from home, to see Lucille’s five outfit changes a days, to talk at length with Eliza about how fast cheetahs run, where jaguars live and how fast Spiderman can climb buildings. I am lucky. And I know I will miss these days when they are a distant memory. But for now, I also know this: taking care of two children is hard work and anyone who says otherwise either has a great prescription for something I don’t or is just not being honest. It does not always bring me joy. It’s isn’t always so much fun. Some days, it isn’t fun at all.

So if I could rewrite the New Yorker cartoon the bumper sticker on the minivan might read “I’d rather be working on my book,” or “I’d rather be working on my on that piece of fiction,” or it might read “I’d rather be doing anything but this” because even though I love my daughters profoundly, it’s honestly how I feel some days.