Hi friends,

It’s been a while since I’ve posted a blog.  I’ve been distracted by a writing project I hope to have completed this spring. And I’ve had my life shaken up a bit by some recent health challenges.  Here’s a little literary life update.  As always, thank you for being my readers and friends.

When I was 16, living in Philadelphia, I developed an autoimmune condition called Reynauds.  When my body was cold, I lost blood flow to my fingers, toes and knees.  Since then, I’ve battled Reynauds any time the temperature drops below 60.   It’s been an irritating, often painful condition.  Many times I’ve felt embarrassed when people have pointed out that my hands look blue.  On more than one occasion I have shoved my swollen, blue hands into my pockets when someone wanted to take a photo together. 

Fast-forward to my late thirties.  I began experiencing flairs of join pain in my fingers, toes and elbows.  So I added some DHA and other supplements to life and that seemed to take care of the problem for a time.

Then when I turned 40, the joint pain returned and it was intense.  Some mornings I couldn’t walk very well on my feet…they just ached too badly.  A few times I had to open doorknobs with my wrists. Typing on the computer was challenging, and as a dedicated writer, that scared me a lot.   I knew something more serious was happening in my body, but I just didn’t know what.  The pain was insistent that I pay closer attention.

This past summer B. Sterling and the kids and I spent a week at the beach in Galveston.  It was a wonderful week of sun and swimming with my little family, but during that week, my joint pain was the worst it has ever been.  My hands were swollen and felt as though I’d slammed them on concrete. My feet throbbed and ached constantly. I took Advil every four hours, just to be able to play on the beach with my kids. Not only that, it seemed that everything I ate wasn’t working for me.  My whole digestive system was angry with me.  And I felt a touch of depression lurking in the shadows.  I couldn’t make sense of it all.   I decided that when we went home to Austin I would get my blood work done right away.

So, in many ways, it didn’t come as a surprise then when the rheumatologist sat me down a few weeks later and said definitively that I have Rheumatoid Arthritis.  She showed me my blood work and said my ANA antibody levels were some of the highest she’s ever seen.  “Your immune system is attacking itself. And your Lupus indicators are very high. You don’t show the outward signs of Lupus, but you need to get on the medication that can control the RA and keep Lupus from manifesting.”  It was really alarming information. Much weightier than I’d expected to hear. 

Then the doctor did something I’ll never forget.  She very gently reached out and took my hands in hers. She slowly touched my fingers at the joints. She pressed on the swollen tops.  She turned over both hands to examine my palms, pressing each finger.   It was a strange moment.  I felt suddenly like a child, very vulnerable.  Since I was 16 my hands have caused me pain when I’m cold. I’ve felt embarrassed of them, dismissive of them.  But it’s also my hands that I write with.  The very gifts God has given me are manifested through my hands. Every single day I jot down ideas for a poem or a story with my hands.  When I write long-hand I remember my child self. Handwriting is a link to your inner child.   My hands give life to the words in my heart.  She looked at me and said kindly, “I would be able to tell from a mile away that you have Rheumatoid Arthritis.  Your hands say it all.” 

I left the doctor’s office in tears that day.  I was scared by the RA diagnosis. But I also felt strangely seen.   The weight of hiding the pain, discoloration and swelling in my hands was called out gently.  The doctor and my body told me softly but intently, “It’s time to pay attention.”

That was this August.  Since then I’ve eliminated all grains, dairy and most sugar from my diet.  I’ve gone on a medication to control the RA and resist Lupus.  For the first time in my life, I can hear my body.  When I don’t eat inflammatory foods I feel amazing. When I do eat inflammatory foods my body hurts.

And more than ever I see my hands as beautiful.  They’re more wrinkled every day.  And some days they still ache.  But they are the same hands that get it all done in this family.  That cook, clean, wash, wipe away tears and write feverishly when the spirit hits me.  And God willing they’ll bring you my first collection of poetry this spring. 

Isaiah 41:13 For I, the Lord your God, hold your right hand; it is I who say to you, “Fear not, I am the one who helps you.”

God knows the number of hairs on your head but what about the number of teeth in your mouth? To what extent does God care for me, or my family?  Two years ago, our orthodontist friend said he’d fit Ace for some braces to help make space for Ace’s top teeth to come in straight.  At the appointment our ortho friend took some panoramic photos of Ace’s mouth, then he sat us down in his office after he took the X-rays.  “I’ve got some strange news for you guys.  Ace seems to be missing seven permanent teeth.”    Ace started to cry immediately and covered his mouth instinctively.  We felt like the roadrunner right when he realizes there’s no ground under him.  Our eyes were like saucers.  My jaw dropped.  “Are you sure?”
“Yep, pretty sure. Look…” He pointed at various gray spots on the X-ray.  “Seven of his baby teeth do not appear to have permanent replacements under the gums.”
I glanced tenderly at my son. Suddenly I pictured him as teenager looking like the old man in Pixar’s movie, “Up.”  Inverted, shriveled lips at sixteen because he has no teeth.  I gulped and tried not to show my alarm.
But I was alarmed.  And when I told B. Sterling the news that evening he was just as worried.  I tossed and turned in bed that night.  Finally, at some awful hour I got up and went downstairs to the couch to think and pray.  As I sat in the quiet dark house I was able to pinpoint what I felt about Ace and the teeth issue.  And it was this: what if God doesn’t care about my child as much as I’ve believed He does?  What if this reliance I have in God for my child’s life is all in vain?  A sticky, inky fear slid through me. Nobody wants to feel that their kid’s formation was a madcap assembly job in utero. But what if…. Suddenly I feared that God was like a mealy mouthed politician who wouldn’t admit He’d made errors with my child’s health. Mistakes were made. Authorities have been notified.   I reminded myself: it’s just teeth.  It could be so much worse.  And that’s completely true.  But a parent’s heart craves a deeper assurance, not comfort by comparison.
A few weeks ago I took Ace to a pediatric dentist to get his opinion on the matter.  He confirmed what our orthodontist had seen on the X-ray.  Ace is definitely missing seven permanent teeth. “But let me put you at ease a bit,” he said, “Amazingly, Ace is not missing any of his front permanent teeth, so cosmetically he’s in good shape. Just protect those baby teeth on the sides as long as you can.”  Then he turned to Ace and added, “So make sure to wear your mouth guard when you play baseball.” 
And that’s exactly where we find ourselves right now.  I’m sitting in the stands watching my son grab his glove and shove in his mouth guard as he runs out to the baseball diamond.  Delicate teeth or not, my son wants to eat, sleep and breathe the game of baseball.  And as his mom, I have this strange sort of déjà vu as I watch him warm up on the pitcher’s mound.  A peace comes over me…that feeling that we’re right in the pocket.   Right where we need to be. As though there’s already a photo album of these days.  As though He knows the number of hairs on my child’s head and the number of teeth in his mouth.   As though this is the present that was already planned for.  
Psalm 139:16
All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

I’m writing a new book these days. And I’m also teaching English as a second language to middle schoolers.  Maybe those two pursuits don’t seem of equal weight at first, but you’d be surprised.   I am every day.  Teaching ESL is like looking at the pond water sample under a microscope. Now I truly see what’s there.  There’s nothing like teaching the most basic parts of the English language: I am. You are. He is. She is.  We are. They are.  You begin to know why you know what you know. 
In the evenings I go home and apply everything I know that I know about language into crafting a story.  But I don’t forget the beauty and simplicity of mastering one’s “to be” verbs. You have to love the building blocks.   Perhaps an analogy might be a chef who both grows and cooks the food.  Who digs with a trowel the hole in the ground and places in a simple seed.  Gets his hands dirty.  Stoops a bit low.  Then waits and watches.  When the freshest, most delicious vegetables grow, his joy is doubled to cook them into a fine dish.  He knows his ingredients from beginning to end.   I like a job like teaching ESL to immigrants.  It keeps me humble. Teaching English as a second language gives me hands into the whole spectrum of language development and mastery.  Every day I am intrigued.
I’ve taught adult ESL. And now I teach ESL to 12 year old.  These kids are the lucky ones, not the adults.  Adults can only hope for the mental acuity to translate fast. That’s as good as it will get for adults.  The first language will always reign for adults who try to learn a foreign language.  But for kids who get immersed at a formative age, their brains will actually grow both languages simultaneously.
I have a funny, energetic 7^th grade boy in my class this year named Alberto. He’s from Honduras.  He’d never stepped foot on American soil until last year, when he started sixth grade in Austin at 11 years old.  Last week we went outside to the soccer field when we had 20 minutes of class time to spare.  Alberto told me in nearly perfect grammatical English, “Ms., It’s so hard when you first get here and don’t speak English.  Last year I didn’t know any words in English.  It was so difficult.”
I point out the obvious victory inherent in this confession, “But here you are telling me in fantastic English how difficult it was to learn English.”  He smiled, an awe shuck sort of smile.  
Then he ran off to catch up to the soccer ball.  In ten years Alberto will  be 22 and there will be only a wisp, a faint hint of a Honduran accent when he speaks English. Most people won’ t even hear the accent by then.    And the memory of not knowing English for him will be a dim, distant thing.  Something floating away as a blurry memory of childhood.   He won’t be able to remember his Honduran self without the English mind.  He’ll tell himself in English what life was like before he knew English. 
This is the strange gift of immersion.  The gift of forgetting when you didn’t know what you know now.  And despite middle school being a generally awful time in life for most people, my ESL students are truly the lucky ones.  They refresh my sense of wonder at our capacity to give and receive language. 

It’s hard to stop and simply be with my needy children. Lately I’ve been keenly aware of this struggle. Perhaps it’s because it’s Christmas, and I’ve got a hundred things to get done for my job or around the house, so that I can finally relax. (That’s what I tell them.) But if I’m honest I know that it goes deeper than that. I’ve cultivated a life of frenetic distraction. I’m out of practice with the art of simply being present. And worse, I’ve lost faith in my own capacity to be so still. Just sitting without my phone? Without an agenda? But just “holding space” for my children? I’ve forgotten how to do it. But yesterday as I stood in my kitchen watching water boil in my new electric tea kettle I realized I’ve been making it all so much more complicated than is necessary. A memory came back to me from my childhood that infused me again with confidence in simple companionship. I was thirteen and it was our first 24 hours of living in Scotland. We were renters in a row home in Glasgow. None of the furniture or art was ours, and certainly none of the kitchen appliances. They all belonged to the owner of the home. It was my first time with real jet lag. It was the middle of the night in Scotland, but my body didn’t think so. And being already a very anxious child, I was undone by the unfamiliar surroundings. My siblings were all asleep; I felt totally alone. I walked down to my parents room and cried to my mom.
Mom got out of bed and put on her robe and with total weariness sagging her shoulders muttered, “What do you need Jess?” It was a plea. I could imagine on the inside she was crying, Help me help you because you are by far my most needy child.
I didn’t know. I didn’t have answers. I just needed some simple comfort.
She sighed, tightened her robe and whispered, “Come on.” We trudged down the long wooden staircase, around the corner and down another narrow hall. We didn’t know the house at all. We felt our way in the dark. Into the kitchen (which was where Mom naturally solved all our family problems).
Mom looked around the unfamiliar space. She had barely even entered the kitchen since our arrival the day before. Dad had gone to the store for a few basic things: bread, cereal, milk, butter and eggs, coffee and tea.
She went over to the electric tea kettle. “I’ve never used an electric one” she murmured quietly. It was some awful hour in the middle of the night. Whispering felt right.
I stood next to her, a disheveled, distraught teenager. She filled the kettle, put the lid back on and clicked the red button. Sure enough, it buzzed to life inside. The red button clicked itself off and she poured the steaming water into a mug and dropped in an herbal tea bag. Then she opened the loaf of white bread and made a piece of toast in the toaster. She spread butter on the toast. Then she cut it into four long strips. “Finger toast” Mom’s signature- “you’re not feeling well. Eat this.” –dish,
Then she brought it all to the table and we sat. I ate each buttery “finger” and sipped the tea. I remember Mom sat across from me and didn’t say a word. Just leaned her elbows on the table and held her head in her hands. She let her eyes close, then open, then drowse again. It was the middle of the night. I sipped and nibbled. Every buttery inch soothed me. Every sip warmed up a cold pit in my belly.
There wasn’t any point in talking. We wouldn’t solve my teenage angst. It had to run its course. And I had to learn to find God in the midst of it. I had to struggle.
Mom was exhausted, but I knew she’d sit with me until I finished the tea and toast. Though my teenage woes felt complicated, what I needed from my mom that night was not. I needed something profoundly simple: quiet companionship. Tea, toast and a present mom. I suppose Mom walked me back to bed after my tea and toast. But I don’t remember. It doesn’t really matter. She’d already given me exactly what I needed.

All teachers know that an empty classroom is just a drab, silent space with desks.  Unless a crowd of students is present, the space doesn’t seem to hold any magic. 
But here we are seven months into the pandemic and the fall of a new school year.  No teacher in America will tell you that their teaching scenario is unfazed by Covid.  Every teacher is having to do his or her job in a very, very different way.  And in the district where I’m teaching, this looks like a hybrid of in-person and virtual teaching.  Most parents have opted for their children to stay home and do their classes virtually. But some parents need to work, so the district has allowed those students to be on campus, albeit hooked up to computers to do their lessons virtually.
So I have found myself in a very odd role for the past two weeks.  I am a Zoom teacher to the kids who are all home plugged in at home. And I am babysitter to one solitary student in my classroom.
That’s right. I said one solitary student in my classroom. On the first day of in-person school Carmen walked into my room with her backpack and mask on.  In a muffled voice she looked around at all the empty desks and asked, “Am I the only student?” 
“Yes, I m afraid so.”  I hated to have to admit it. Her shoulders fell.  A look came over her that I could read exactly.  It said, Oh, silly me to have thought things were going back to normal.
That was Monday. And Carmen and I quickly both discovered that we had a lot of empty time between Zoom classes.  She and I found a bag of lollipops in my desk, left over from the previous teacher. They were slightly soft but she and I both chomped on about four a-piece. 
I picked goo out of my teeth and asked her about her classes that morning.   “Pretty boring” she muttered, without making eye contact. 
On Tuesday, during our free time she and I took sidewalk chalk out to the track area.  I drew the school mascot.  Carmen drew hearts and wrote her name in a flourishy, flowery style.  It was hot out.  There wasn’t much to talk about.
On Wednesday, we bounced a small rubber ball all over the track. It was 11:30am and already 90 degrees.  “Don’t you want to take your sweatshirt off” I kept asking her because I’m a mom and worry about things like overheating. “Nope” she said even though her face was really red.  We refilled our water bottles inside the building.  “It felt good to exercise.  I actually miss gym class,” she said behind her mask.  We laughed together that Covid has made her miss gym class.
During my planning time on Thursday I left school to get some Starbucks. I decided to get one for Carmen too, but make hers a decaf I told the barista.  When I got back to school and handed the icy, whipped cream topped drink to her, Carmen said, “Wow, thanks, Miss!”  She drank it during her next Zoom class.
On Friday, she and I were both bleary-eyed from so much screen time.  “Let’s walk some laps on the track” I said when she and I had both finished lunch early.  The air was pleasant and the sun was mercifully hidden behind some clouds. We walked casually, almost like to two people who’ve chosen each other’s company. “Tell me about your parents” I said.  “Where were they born?”
And Carmen started talking.  Really talking.  “A little town in Chihuahua Mexico.  And my grandparents all still live there.”
I asked question after question.  Tell me about your Abuela’s cooking. How does she make her tamales?  How spicy is her home-made salsa? Tell me what your Abuelo plans in his fields.  Where does he sell his harvest?  Suddenly I had the clarity and time to really listen.  There were no other distractions. No other students.  “My grandparents’ adobe house stays cool in summer” she said, “and it always smells like carnitas and spices.” 
I looked up at the sky and the passing clouds.  This is just fine, I thought. Just like this.  A little shade, some pleasant conversation and a description of Mexico—a place I’ve never been and one would like to see one day.  It was the first time all week I felt my shoulders relax.  I stopped wishing there were more students in my classroom.  I stopped being discouraged about it for those laps around the track with my one and only student. 
And I remembered again that one matters.  In teaching, the aim has always been that one student at a time lights up with knowledge and understanding.  Had I forgotten that? Had I forgotten that a lesson for thirty students is of equal value to a lesson written and taught for one?   In my spiritual life this is bedrock truth as well.  “Or what woman who has ten silver coins and loses one of them does not light a lamp, sweep her house, and search carefully until she finds it?  And when she finds it, she calls together her friends and neighbors to say, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my lost coin. Luke 15:8-10
I had forgotten.  The searching for and finding of one is worthy of gratitude. 
“Do not despise the day of small beginnings.  For God rejoices to see the work begin.” Zech 4:10
Tomorrow during our free time, I’m going to introduce Carmen to the game of Scrabble. Who knows what new vocabulary she’ll develop from it.  We’ll take it one word at a time 

Like most people around the world,  our family has not ventured too far in the past five months.  We haven’t taken any airplane rides.  The most we’ve done is drive to El Paso to shelter-in at my laws house for a change of scenery.  So we decided with just a few more weeks of summer break that we wanted to take a short trip to a beach on the Gulf coast.  We rented a little house with another family, packed up our cooler and all the beach things we’d need for a few days and headed east out of Austin.  As I expected, the time at the ocean was just what our family needed. And it got me thinking….
The thing I like best about the ocean is the way the wind and crashing waves makes talking less of an option.  It’s hard to hear people at the beach unless you’re right  up close.  I find it blissful to simply sit and watch my people play in the muffling wind.  Where I might have corrected a behavior or spoken up, I don’t at the ocean.  No point. They wouldn’t even hear me unless I got out of this camping chair.  So I wave and smile.  They’ll work it out.  I find myself smiling more than usual at the shore.  I smile out at the waves and my children on the boogie boards.  I smile up at the seagulls.  I smile even while I’m readjusting the blanket that’s gotten sandy again. A smile and squint become one and the same at the beach.
And then there are smells.  At the ocean I think about time periods past.  How smelly life probably was in ages past.  My 21^st century nose doesn’t like a briny wetness.  That mineral fishy odor that is the marina.  The shore is both fresh and putrid. Sometimes in the same breeze.  I feel how modern I am. How offended I am by anything less than the smell of a Target superstore.  My daughter runs from the water to my chair. “Mom,” she’s screaming, “Mom!”  I smile up at her.  She’s holding a drippy seashell. “Mom, smell this shell.”  I laugh and do.  And the odor is unmistakably not land dwelling.  I am the foreigner here. 
At the beach I finally feel like my kids play…. in a way that I find fascinating.  They run to the water’s edge and splash. And then in the next moment they are sitting in the sand by themselves, digging and humming a tune only they know.  Completely and totally absorbed in their own tactile, sensory moment.  I don’t dare interrupt.  My daughter is digging a hole and holding up clumps of sand to examine, right to her face.  My son is walking at the edge, head down riveted by what gets upended when the wave recedes.  I could watch them play like this all day. I would like this to go on and on.  Never return to a screen. They are the least self-conscious and the most beautiful here at the beach.
And as for me some complicated things seem simpler and simple things seem profound when I’m staring out at the ocean.  I guess it’s the sense of perspective you get there. 
Even though part of me wants to cradle fear, a different, more lasting piece wants to nurture hope.  A pandemic has taught us that we can plan for tomorrow, but we can’t know what the days will hold.  I want to trust God more.  But God, help me to trust you more!  I look out at the waves.  Fashion me into something like them, Lord.  Over and over again, I release.  I guess this is what it means to be fully alive. 

Both my kids will be in school in this fall. This is both sad and happy. Two days ago was my birthday.  I didn’t want to do anything special. Just our little domestic routines with maybe a nice alfresco lunch with my husband.  And we did.  But one thing I realized when I was writing that day was, oh THIS is the age I will be when both kids go to school. It’s 42. Here I am at that very age.  When Iris was a newborn and I sat in that skinny hospital bed, getting to know her face, I remember doing the math in my head.  Ok, so I’ll be 42 when both kids go off to school.  When you have a newborn in your arms that feels about as real as someone saying to a college grad, “Ok so what are your plans for retirement?”  I didn’t really believe the day would come.
But now here I am. I keep saying  lasts to myself, as in: This is the last day of having Iris home with me full time. And today she wanted to take a rest. (It’s Ace’s last full day of school). As I read her a book on her bed, I said to myself:  this is the last nap she’ll take in her preschool years.  (I’m one of those people who tortures myself by realizing ALL the feelings).
I’ve done every kind of employment situations as a mom these 8 years.  Worked full-time with my child in full time daycare. (First parent to drop him off, last to pick him up.)  I’ve done part-time with one in school and the other in daycare. Then I’ve free-lanced from home and used the YMCA childcare literally as often as they’d allow.  Every year of being a mom has required a little different arrangement.   Every arrangement has had it’s good and bad. 
I realize I’m not in uncharted waters here. Every mom has done this too…wrestled with the dueling emotions of glee that her all her children will be in school full time and grief that the years of small children underfoot are over.
At its core it’s a selfish grief.  I’m grieving that I don’t have little ones any more.  If I have little ones than maybe I’m also still young?
In my journals stacked on my nightstand I eek out a few sentences sometimes that tell even more: I hate getting older. I hate that this is happening to me. I’m so deeply sad and happy that my children will both be in school.
I don’t know how to separate the sad and happy.
Maybe it’s like this: I bought (horror of horrors) my kids ice cream cones from McDonald’s the other day.  They both thought they wanted chocolate and vanilla swirl.  When I handed Ace his cone, he looked at the swirl and announced, “Actually, can you take out the vanilla parts? I’d rather just eat the chocolate.”
I laughed.  “Sorry, bud. That’s not really possible.  The ice cream is too soft and the flavors have already started melting into each other.”
And that’s how I feel about my kids both being in school.  My heart is too soft for this. And the sad and happy are melting into each other. So that I don’t know how to taste one without the other.

For 2019 I’ll be writing and curating my first poetry collection. I’ve gotten sidetracked for a few decades! Poetry is my first love in literature, and it’s time. Hoping to publish a collection of poems at the end of this year.

We all pray for people we love to be healed of illnesses. Even if you don’t consciously know you are praying. Please, please, we say in our hearts. The last couple years I’ve prayed for my mom’s eyesight to be restored. We all have it- this ache for things to be made right for every person.
Then this year I have been reading 1 and 2 Corinthians. And I came across a curious little verse that sparked a supposition in my imagination. Suppose Paul did stay the winter in Corinth…what divine appointment would his long winter stay have been for…?

The Knock
“Perhaps I will stay with you a while,
or even spend the winter.” 1 Corinthians 16:6

And suppose he does stay
Suppose Paul extends his visit to Corinth that winter
keeping his mat unrolled at a brother’s house
And suppose that mid-winter in Corinth a child in the village falls ill 
An eight year old girl, the daughter of a deacon in the church
The hot dry fever
the gray bed day after day
Bare branches outside pulse her bedroom wall  
Her father can see her drifting away
her skin thins and the bones protrude
She’s stopped taking water
“Go and fetch Paul” the father hurries his boy out the door
Across the dusty agora
down the path the boy runs
up to the house where the disciple has been staying this winter
The boy clamors to the door- raps twice hard
And suppose Paul is there inside and hears the knock
He’s nodded off while praying
down into the kind of sleep that scoops out the burdens of the mind and you wake up ready
Paul stands, wipes his face and tightens his robe around him 
He knows what the knock means 
“Who is it, boy? Who is sick?”
They hurry back together through the streets, straight into the house where the sick child lives
Paul moves toward the bed
His footfall softens, but his resolve compresses to a white-hot assurance
This is what the long winter in Corinth has been for
He reaches out his broad, warm hand
The hand that clung to a wooden board for three days stranded at sea The hand that shook free of the poisonous snake 
The hand that reached out toward the voice that called to him by name on a road so long ago
“Wake up, child” This hand touches her forehead
“The winter is over.  The spring has come.”

Friends, B. Sterling and I are excited to share with you, our friends, about our new venture of Archer Collaborative.

Archer Collaborative aims to elevate any event through crafted songs, talks, stories and multi-media. We’ll collaborate with event planners to marketing teams to anyone in charge of hosting an event.  We can create the whole presentation or thread together the themes and topics before, after, or in between keynote speakers.

What is Archer Collaborative?

Our goal is to make every event more impactful- conferences, fundraisers, churches, retreats, workshops, and much more.

We’re a husband/wife team. B. Sterling is an award winning singer/songwriter, and Jess is a published author, speaker and poet.  We’re both seasoned story-tellers and gifted educators. Together we believe that crafted songs and stories turn a good event into a great one!  

Where We Need Your Help

We’re asking for your help to attract new opportunities for Archer Collaborative. Here are some really simple ways you can help us gain traction:

1. Watch our 1 minute promo video below & visit our website: http://archercollaborative.com to learn more.
2. Connect us (through e-mail) to the best three contacts you believe we could have a conversation with about what we do.
3. Let’s talk! Contact us for a face-to-face or phone conversation about Archer Collaborative for your next event.

We’ve got just a few days till another Christmas. But for over a month we’ve all been forced to listen to Christmas tunes that stream constantly on the radio stations in town.  I figure that I’ve heard the standard ones about 35 times each.  Some of them I just tune out.  The lyrics are so banal that I’d rather make a mental grocery list as I drive than think about just who it is that Mariah Carey really wants for Christmas. Of course another song everybody knows is Little Drummer Boy.  This season, I heard a new version of it by a gospel choir, set to a really danceable tune and rhythm.  I guess the new tune got me actually listening to the words afresh.  There’s a funny line in it that stood out to me as a mother.  Narrating the song, a fictitious drummer boy at the nativity scene asks Mary, “Shall I play for him? And then, “Mary nodded.”
This year I’ve been smiling to myself whenever I hear that line.  Katherine Kenicott Davis, the woman who penned the song in the 1940’s, pictured Mary, (who we assume in this song has given birth a day or two ago, if not hours ago) being so docile and holy that she tells a country kid with a drum, “Sure, come on over and bang on that percussion in front of my newborn baby all you want!” 
She really was anointed because I would not have said yes.  No.  I know what I would have told that little drummer boy, “Oh wow, you brought a drum into my hospital room.  That’s interesting.  You and your marching band of one can go stand over there…quietly. Thank you so much.
“Shall I play for him?  Mary nodded.”  When my first child was born I remember the hospital nurses all reminding me as we placed our baby in the infant car seat, ready to head home, “Have visitors wash their hands. Don’t let people touch the baby’s face or kiss him.”  Or generally breathe within 10 feet of him, is what every new mother adds in her mind.   I guarded that baby fiercely.  I even suggested that a visitor with a tiny tickle in her throat wear a mask near my baby. My friend wasn’t amused.  And certainly nobody was allowed to play a percussion instrument in my newborn baby’s close proximity. 
If Davis’ rendering of Mary in the song was anything close to the real Mary’s disposition than I’ve got some growing to do in my teeny tiny control issues.
I don’t think of myself as a controlling person.  I let my kids eat Doritos in our car seats for goodness sake.  I can sometimes go to bed with dirty dishes in the sink.  I don’t make too big a fuss about my husband’s constant mound of clothes on our bedroom floor.  But I do know in my heart that I often, (if not always) want life’s special moments to go exactly my way.  Like Christmas, for instance. My daughter had a Christmas dance recital the other night. I wanted too much for the whole evening to be so absolutely precious that I virtually crushed everyone with my controlling zeal.  “Children, stand over there now for a photo.”…  “Children! I said over there!  I said photo! Over there! now!!!!
“Iris, hold still. You will hold still and let me tie this darling ribbon in your hair. Right. Now.” 
My family whimpered and cowed under my crazy-making.  My desire to make memories mixed with a fear that I’m not measuring up to some (ever fluctuating) standard creates in me a mean spirit.  I find everyone around me at fault for my own lack of satisfaction.  I can’t rest.  I can’t relax.  I can’t be present. It’s not the place where creativity blooms.  And it’s not how I want to live.  I struggle to let go and let spaces, moments or emotions be messy.  But in my deepest, most innocent childlike place I really do know that mess is a part of the creative, beautiful life.  You can’t open presents without a mess of wrapping paper all around.  And I want the joy of the whole process.  I just have to keep practicing.  I have to nod yes when the child asks, May I play for him?  After all, what’s a few minutes of a-rhythmic noise in the big picture? 
So, have at it kid.  Let your heart be glad, and bang on that drum.