Ok. I’ll admit it. I’ve lied to my kids. Against all my better judgment, against all my own principles, and against all that I want to instill in my children, I lie. Like a rug, sometimes.

There’s no more cake.

The TV’s broken.

That shirt is in the wash.

So, I’ve admitted it. (Now, you go on and admit it, too. It’s the first step to feeling better. Really, it is. The first step in making me feel better, that is.) It makes me feel small and weak and lazy and thoroughly ill-equipped to be raising children, but, still, I do it. And sometimes I even justify it. Now, that’s bad.

Yesterday, though, things went a little too far. I got caught up in a lie, and, before I knew it, I drew my very good friend into it as well. Zoe had been begging to go into Ellen’s house to use her potty. She didn’t really need to go to the potty; this I knew. She only wanted to go in there to play. I’d told her already if she needed to go to the potty, she could use ours, which was across the street.

“But I neeeed to use Ellen’s potty.”

I really didn’t want to get into an argument. We were having a good time out in the yard, and I didn’t want to spoil it with an argument. The problem was, I’d already drawn the line in the sand. A foolish choice, the battle I’d picked, but I’d already told her she couldn’t use Ellen’s potty. I couldn’t let her go to Ellen’s potty, but I had to get her to drop her insistence. Damn, these parental challenges.

“Zoe, Ellen’s potty is broken.”

“Broken?”

“Yeah, broken. It’s all clogged up and the plumber has yet to come.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really.” Fine parenting, huh?

Zoe wasn’t going to buy it. She sought out confirmation. “Ellen, is your potty broken?”

Ellen looked at me. I looked at her. A test of friendship?

“Yes, Zoe, it’s broken, ” Ellen chimed in like a champ. “David couldn’t even take a shower — all the pipes are clogged.”

My God, I’d just gotten my friend to lie for me — over a trip to the potty.

Nothing about the situation was honorable, and I knew it. “Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when at first we practice to deceive,” I chanted. I knew my chagrin was the least of my punishment. I would get my due returns. I would get my due returns, and then some.

Somehow, though, Karma got a little mixed up on doling out her justice. Perhaps it was the location of the offense, or, perhaps it was the subject of the lie, but, in any event, Karma’s wires got a little crossed. The next morning? I got a phone call from Ellen. Her water heater was on the fritz.

Tangled, indeed.

It started off well enough. My intentions were pure. It was to be the closest thing I could manage to “Breakfast in Bed” — home-made cinnamon rolls and sticky buns, a bright and cheery coffee mug, and some coffee to top it all off. They each deserve a break after a school year of teaching toddlers and three-year-olds.

After the baking session that stretched painfully past 11:30 p.m. and included two trips to the grocery store, I figured, Well, they’re still worth it.

But when the quest to find four reasonably priced but still attractive coffee mugs spanned trips to Target, Bed, Bath & Beyond, Wal-Mart, Big Lots, The Dollar Tree, and Marshall’s, not to mention the final trip to the grocery store to pick up sample-sized coffee? Well, I’m no longer so sure.

I wouldn’t exactly call it gratitude, the thoughts I now associate with those gifts.

Packages are always a delightful presence at the door. Whether you’re expecting a parcel to be delivered, or what’s presenting itself at your door is a complete surprise, there’s something about a brown package that delights the soul. A package is like an unexpected kiss — a peck, if you will — surprising you into a moment of stillness and consideration, savoring the moment of delivery as much as what unfolds immediately following.

Yesterday was a particularly good day, then. Not once, but twice the mailman rapped on my door to announce the delivery of a bundle from the heavens of wired commerce. The first package teased my sense of smell and all the thoughts and memories inexorably tied therein. Coffee, that wonderful elixir of morning consciousness, promised adventures in taste and delight.

But it was the second package that swept me away for the rest of the day. Delivered several hours after the first, I held the package for a moment, and then let the kiss unfold. In it lay two books, one for me and one for my two children.

I picked up my book, fresh off the press and newly released, and pawed its cover. I thought about the first book from the author, its richness and beauty and achingly real characters, how it made me breathe and feel. I hesitated a moment. Would this one disappoint? Such expectations I held in my hand. I set it aside. I wasn’t ready.

Next, then, I picked up the book intended for my children. True to form, its cover beckoned with whimsical and fantastic images. I fell prey to its allure and opened the cover. Abracadabra!

Poems. Silly ones. Serious ones. Nonsense ones. Fantastic and far-fetched, real and tactile — they all leapt off page after page after page. Knitting witches, and blue donkeys, and trees that don’t know how to grow themselves right, and brown skin, and reading wolves: these were my companions for the afternoon. I found myself reading aloud, for that’s what poetry wants you to do — compels you to do — and delighting over the taste of the curious words tickling my tongue. I mourned the ten-year-old’s old age. I fell asleep with the wolf, sated with story. I drew pictures and sang songs and swam in words like brillig and frood. I ached in jealousy over the simplicity and complexity and completeness of every idea and emotion. Awestruck, I was, awash in the aftermath of that kiss. Each page, each poem was a new delight. For an hour or more, I lived alone in the joy of those poems.

And then I discovered the ecstasy of sharing them.

“Mom? Is quiet time over?” My daughter called from the bottom of the stairs. I didn’t even look at the clock. I was ready for quiet time to be over. I wanted to share my joy with her.

“Yes, Zoe. And look! I have something for you. Do you know what a poem is, Zoe?”

She looked at me, perplexed.

I started to explain. “A poem is…Well, you put words together. And, they may or may not make any sense. But they do. And they sing a song, but there’s not really any music — but there is music, it’s just the words making the music. And…” I stopped, defeated.

“Let me show you.”

I led her back to her room, climbed on to the bed with her, opened the book once again, and began to read aloud.

Go on. Open it.

Open it, indeed. A package of poetry. A kiss of words. Delivered to our doorstep, and delivering the two of us from everything else. It was hours before we returned.

By the calendar’s standards, Summer is nearly a month away, but by all other indications — school ending, temperatures rising, gardens growing — Summer is knocking on our door.

The pool opens this weekend, and we’ll be there soon after. This summer promises to be filled with afternoons spent splashing in the cool water, playing underwater games, and snacking in the shade of umbrellas. My weekly CSA deliveries, ongoing now for about a month, are about to kick into high gear. Blueberries, peaches, corn and — oooohhhhh — tomatoes! I can taste them now. My own garden has started blossoming, hinting at the promise of its summer harvest. The sundown-shy evenings beckon with family activities — bike riding, ice cream outings, and cool walks in the neighborhood. And the weekends blare their siren songs of outdoor concerts, time at the lake and movies at the park. My senses are filled with anticipation and glee.

Perhaps it’s inevitable that the temperatures will begin to soar just a little too high. The breezes will halt and a stillness will descend upon us. All the activities will suddenly become just too much, and even those tomatoes will wear out their welcome. Perhaps.

But today, as I’m standing on the cusp of Summer, I can’t do anything but smile. Bring it on.

[In response to Sunday Scribblings...]

For the first of her three wishes, she wished for another wish.

Her wish was granted.

For the second, she again wished for another wish, and it, too, was granted.

For her third wish? A wish, granted once again.

She got all that she wished for, and nothing at all.

I don’t particularly care for wishes. Wishes are only stunted visions — dreams without wings. A wish is cast off, tossed into the ether, sent to find its mythical grantor with only hope for sustenance. Saddled with heart-felt expectations, but given no heart for work, a wish is intrinsically and fatally flawed in its genesis. Its only destiny is a withered and dessicated death.

Dreams and visions, on the other hand, are conceived by their creator, lovingly nurtured, and, in the best of times, given birth into a world of the senses, a world of reality. Dreams share their creator’s soul, flourishing in the nutrient-rich material of the dreamer’s toil and passion. Once given life in the here in now, it’s hard to find the seam that separates the dreamer from the dream. The dream is the dreamer. A dream fallen short of full fruition? Has still travelled farther than a wish.

I don’t make wishes. I don’t orphan my hopes. I give my hopes life in my dreams. Three wishes, thirty wishes, three thousand wishes — I’d take one dream over them all.

She cut her hair.

I should have known this was coming: the particularly intense interest in scissors lately; the previous day’s experiment with the dolls’ hair and the horses’ manes; the scissors just disappearing and reappearing elsewhere of late. I should have known. Instead, I just casually returned the scissors to their rightful place — where she could still get to them — and didn’t think a thing of it. What was I thinking?

Funny thing, though. I was thinking. I knew, deep down, it was coming. And I knew I couldn’t stop it. It’s a rite of passage, I think, cutting your own hair. Just after makeup with mommy, but before the first sleepover, before the first rollerskating party, before the first pierced earrings — before all of this and so, so much more, little girls cut their hair. I’m not sure what draws us to do it. Perhaps there’s something mysterious about the power of scissors that can’t be explained by just cutting paper. Turning those scissors on our own hair isn’t as much a destructive act, I believe, as it is an act of imagination, of journey, of fantasy, and, yes, of power. In one swift move, as we watch our own tendrils fall to the floor, we become aware of our capacity to impart drastic change — in ourselves and in the world around us. I don’t think for one moment I’m being overly analytical of this rite. There is truly something magical in cutting one’s own hair. And my daughter? Has just lived some of this magic.

She’ll look a little silly this summer. The choppy ends, the chunky pieces will all announce to the world her latest status: no longer a little girl. Burgeoning independence will mature and continue to ripen over the summer, I’m sure. The curiosity so central to her artistic exploration with scissors will lead her to many more adventures and discoveries. Drastic change — in her world and the world around her — is at her fingertips. She’s ready, with a brand new style. I’m ready, too. This rite of passage, I celebrate.

One brand new Coffeemaker. No more mess, no more spills, and one cup of coffee hot enough to stay warm until the last drop. If I can’t be given the time to enjoy a cup of hot coffee for Mother’s Day, getting a cup of coffee hot enough to enjoy over time is the next best thing.

Gifts of toasters and coffeemakers might be the death knell of a relationship in your book — a sign that meals shared in silence and evenings spent in la-z-boy isolation are on the near horizon, but not in my book. In my book? A gift of a coffeemaker represents perfect understanding and empathy. Downright sexy, I say.

Now, just what that says about me? I shudder to think. That’s one for Things That Make You Go Hmmm.

My son’s art project. An underwater “ocean”scape complete with sea creatures, coral, and — you guessed it — goldfish. And now, the goldfish are no longer. Picked clean by my favorite chow hound.

It seems as though my dog has developed an affinity for fine art. I can’t imagine what he’d do with one of Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup masterpieces. The possibilities are endless.

[A friend of mine contributes to Sunday Scribblings. I don't fancy myself a writer, but I'm always up for a little inspiration.]

The books I would write would be the stories that live inside me. The ones that breathe and laugh and mope and cry and rattle about and sleep soundly within me. The stories that are polite guests in my soul, the ones that are unwelcome intruders, and the ones that are comfortable friends. The stories that are shy and self-conscious. The stories that are bold with conviction. These stories — all of them — would flow effortlessly through my pen. The ink wouldn’t sputter. It wouldn’t blot. Simply, I’d get it right.

All those moments of thought that appear to be on the edge of something bigger, something more meaningful? They would have life breathed into them, skin surrounding them, blood coursing within them in the books I would write.

The paths that seem to quickly fade from under my feet, leaving me lost, would suddenly reappear and lead me — somewhere — in the books I would write.

The headstrong passion that shouts within me would find boldface type and forceful fonts in the books I would write.

The beliefs I know, the facts I believe — would each be found in the books I would write.

The questions I ask myself would be answered and explained in the books I would write.

And the things I do not know about my own self would reveal themselves to me in the books I would write.

The books I would write? They would have a faithful audience — of one.

I stumbled on an old friend’s blog the other day. A very old friend. We knew each other in first through third grades. We were next door neighbors in a cul-de-sac neighborhood, and we, along with one other girl in the cul-de-sac, made up a three-ring circus of outdoor play, imaginative folly, and flips. For close to four years, these three Navy brats, used to moving about and saying goodbye as much as we said hello, found a sense of permanence in each other. I think we knew it at the time — there was something magical about our friendship, about that time in our lives. And then we moved away.

It’s hard to expect a nine year old to maintain connections across thousands — tens of thousands — of miles. Dispersed across the world, literally, the letters were written faithfully at first, tucked in with stickers and pictures and puzzles and little surprises. But then, as the years passed, the distance between letters lengthened. Eventually, they stopped. Our parents kept in touch over the years, and we’d learn a little bit about each other’s lives through that grapevine — how her sister studied snakes, how she worked at a travel publishing house, how she’d gone to art school, how her brother had made her an aunt. She knew I’d gotten married, had two kids — the basic stuff. Still, the magical memories were there, the special connection to that time so many years ago held strong.

I wasn’t looking for her the other day when I Googled the name of a local business, but something struck me about the second entry on the results page. A few clicks later, and there she was. Odd, it seemed, to be peering into her life for a few minutes, anonymously lurking over her writing. Odder, still, it seemed, when a childhood photo of her and her little kitten — whose name came right to my consciousness as soon as I laid eyes upon it — appeared on one of the recent entries. A blog comment and an exchange of emails later, and a tenuous grasp on a connection was reestablished.

Where it goes from there is entirely unknown — and entirely unsaddled with expectation or aspiration. We’re two people more than half a lifetime away from who we were back then. I’m inclined to believe that there was something substantive, something formative, about our time together — that the years in remission don’t really mean all that much. But the realist in me also knows that a lot has occurred in the interim, and we’re each as much a product of those ensuing years as we are the product of those magical years spent drawing and dancing and flipping and giggling. In any event, I’ve been given the rare opportunity to peek into “what ever happened to.” Having done so, I see a lot of what happened way back then. There was little surprise in my view into her modern world.

It’s been a fun week of reminiscing, not so much between the two of us, but in my own mind. Little details emerging from memory have brought small smiles of recognition to my face throughout the week. Even if that’s all this reconnection engenders, it will have been worth it. Stumbling on an old friend, an old life, has been an unexpected and delightful trip, indeed.