Of course, when the new owner drove my beloved Accord away, I cried. Be careful what you pray for, eh?

My tears surprised everyone, especially me. I wasn’t expecting them. At all. I knew we needed to sell the car. I had been bugging Doug for over a week to get it listed. I had prayed it would sell. And then I go and get all weepy about it.

I tried to laugh as I wiped my eyes and nose on my sleeve. After all, it’s just a car.

But it was a good car. My first car. It was reliable, paid for, and, compared to the sofa-mobile, fun to drive. It also represents my life as it has been, and I really love my life, so watching it pull away from the curb and drive off never to return was sort of symbolic: my life is about to change, and it will never be the same, and I’m grieving the loss of this life I love.

Oh, I know my life with four children will still be good. I know it will be rich and full and all that. But it will be different, and I’ve never adapted to change easily, even good change.

I probably should have had some sort of good-bye ceremony for the Accord. Not that the car would have cared, but it might have helped me.

As I sat there weeping and laughing at myself for weeping, Doug held up the stack of hundred dollar bills the buyer had brought and waved them in front of me. I’d never seen so much cash at one time in my life. It felt like drug money. Or blood money. I cried harder.

But within the hour I’d pulled myself together and driven the sofa-mobile to the credit union and deposited the stack o’ cash into our account. Then I went home and did something really sexy with it: I paid off our credit card, padded our emergency fund, and threw the rest at our car loan on the *&^% minivan.

Maybe I should have kept a hundred bucks and bought a commemorative plaque for the Accord to hang in in the driveway. A small reminder of a life I no longer have.

Our pastor began his meditation by mentioning that the word Maundy comes from the Latin mandate. Though you pronounce it like it’s Spanish—mon-DAH-tay—when you see it written you realize right away what it means: mandate, law, command.

The command to which this word refers is from Jesus’ words to the disciples at the Last Supper:

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. (John 13:34)

Jesus’ love was wide and long and deep. His love took Him to the cross and the grave and the pit of hell.

His love was costly.

And it came to me, as clearly as if the words had been spoken aloud, that the “one another” whom I am supposed to love in this costly way are my children. I knew, too, that the cost for me would be my fledgling writing career.

The next day we found out about the twins, and I realized my Maundy Thursday revelations were meant to prepare me.

A few days later, my writer friend Lynne emailed me and her words confirmed what I already knew: she said she knew having two more babies was going to be hard for me because it would mean I could not write as much as I would like to.

I emailed back: “Letting go of my dream of writing another book, of finding an agent for my novel, of being a multi-published author is my little cross to bear, my act of self-sacrificing love. I know you will understand and not think me melodramatic for calling not being able to write a cross to bear. It’s a small cross, I know, but it’s hard for me.”

She responded, “Writing is who you are, Kimberlee. I think not writing very much will be more than a little cross to bear. I think it will be a pretty big cross.”

Her words were like water, easing the guilt I felt for not wanting to let go of these words, these dreams I carry. I drank them down.

Over the weeks of Easter I have struggled to let go of what I want—to find an agent for my novel, to write another novel, to have a career as a writer. Now.

Never mind that I daily run out of energy long before the day runs out of hours, that my brain is a sieve, that I am sometimes so tired I can’t string six words together to form a coherent sentence—I still struggle to hold my dreams lightly, let alone surrender them for a time.

On Sunday at church, our children’s minister, Dianne, found me. “Oh, Kimberlee,” she said, “I was reading something this week, and I thought of you. The author was talking about vocation and how sometimes people have two vocations that seem to conflict with each other, like they’re working at cross-purposes. But he said that eventually those two vocations would flow together, and both vocations would be stronger because of the other one.

“And I thought of you, and I know it’s hard that you’re not writing much right now, but I just knew—I know—that your mothering will make you a better writer better, and your writing will make you a better mom. So hang in there. They’re going to come together.”

I carried those words in my heart all day. They gave me hope.

And I realized: that’s one of the main reasons I write—to give myself and others hope. That is the gift of good words.

I am now a mom with a minivan.

Next thing you know I’ll be signing my kids up for soccer. Won’t that be swell?

One of the reasons I was opposed to having a third child was that it meant we would have to buy another car, and I love my car. For one thing, it’s paid for. For another, it’s reliable. And most important, it has a stick shift.

Then we found out we were pregnant. Then we found out that third child was actually two children, and the minivan became inevitable. So I caved. But I’m not happy about it.

Who could be? I have to give up my sexy silver Accord (hey, it has a stick shift, okay?) for a big clunky car that doesn’t even have the option of a manual transmission. Loser vehicle.

Not to mention, it’s about as fun to drive as a sofa. A nice sofa. But still.

And the crowning insult is that I will be paying hundreds of dollars a month for the next five years for the dubious privilege of driving a couch-car and being a cliché.

The silver lining (because I’m the Queen of Silver Linings, right?) is that the auto-buying experience was actually pleasant. The only other time I bought a car, I hid in the bathroom, leaving Doug alone to fight off the sharky salesmen.

This time around, though, the salesman was totally nice, there were no surprise expenses, and the whole process took less than two hours. If you’re in the market for a car, I give Ed Oliver at Burien Honda six thumbs up—both of mine and all four of the babies’.

Of course, you might come home with a minivan.

When my kids woke up, they were both a little under the weather and cranky. My son fussed all through math. I yelled at him. My daughter threw a fit when I asked her to get ready to go to the gym. I yelled at her.

When I got to the gym for my prenatal yoga class, I realized I had mixed up the times and shown up just as it ended. I yelled at myself (inside my head, of course). But make lemonade, right? (And you know me, I’m soooo good at that.)

Since it was sunny, I took my kids to the park instead. Jack lay on the bench the entire time we were there, said his tummy hurt. So we came home and suddenly he felt fine—fine enough to run around the house with his Lego starship and scream the Darth Vader theme at the top of his lungs, while his sister ran away from him, shrieking. I yelled that I had a headache and go to your room and be quiet NOW!

My babysitter called and said she was sick and wouldn’t be able to come in the afternoon, which meant I wasn’t going to be able to meet with my spiritual director, and on this day of all days, I needed to meet with her.

At 4:30 my friend who was coming for dinner called to say she wouldn’t be coming after all; she was sick, too.

At 5, Doug called and said he wouldn’t be home at 7 like he thought but closer to 8:30. I hung up on him.

At 7:45, instead of staying in their beds, my kids started chasing each other around the house screaming like banshees. I completely lost my head and yelled at them—again— then started weeping, terrified by the prospect of adding two more children to my life. I can’t handle two kids. What am I going to do with four?

Jack and Jane crept back to bed and stayed there, quiet. I felt like a jerk.

The pity party I’d been having all day gave way to self-loathing, and the nasty voices in my head got really loud: “Oh, the poor privileged princess didn’t have her nanny today. Wah. She has two healthy young children and is pregnant with two more. We should play our tiny violin for her, poor thing. To have so much abundance when some people who want children can’t have them, and some people who have them don’t have the means to care for them—it must be rough, this life she lives.” And on and on until I felt about as big as a pea and wanted to crawl into bed and never get out.

And then, by the grace of God, I realized—or remembered—something. In all my self-pity and self-loathing, my focus was on … me. The only way to get out of this nasty spiral was to look outward, to look upward. I stared out the kitchen window as I washed the dinner dishes, and I prayed.

“Thank you, God, for warm water. For my dishwasher. For my children. For my husband who will be home any moment. Thank you that You don’t see me the way the voices in my head see me, that You love me even on days like today, when I feel utterly unlovable…”

The list of things to be grateful for went on and on, until by the time I went to bed, I felt okay, like maybe the day hadn’t been a complete loss, like maybe there was hope for me, for my kids, for our family, our future.

And there was. There is.

Yell at her some more when she cries because you’re yelling at her.

Yell that there’s no reason to be upset, it’s just water for the love of God.

***

Yell at your son when he drips water on the floor because he got out of the bath and went to his bedroom to get a bath toy.

When he tries to clean up his water mess, yell at him for using a clean towel instead of a rag.

When he gets a rag and tries again, yell that he’s dripping more water on the floor and can’t he use his brain and dry himself off before he makes an even bigger mess for the love of all that’s holy?

When he starts to cry and says, “I’m sorry, Mama, I’m so sorry,” drop an f-bomb, go to your bedroom, throw yourself on the bed, scream into the mattress, and wonder what on earth is the matter with you – do you have a water phobia or something? Or are you really just that much of a freak of nature that you would yell at young children because they spilled water?

Get off the bed, take a deep breath, and go apologize to your children. Feel like the most unworthy parent in history when they hug you and say, “It’s okay, Mama, I know you weren’t yelling on the inside.”

I’m at the park with my kids. They’re happily doing what my son calls “double dides” down the twisty slide: they lie down side by side and speed to the bottom.

I sit on the edge of the sandbox with a group of other moms. They’re talking about a sale on packaged something-or-other at Costco. I’m only half-listening. A little fish of an idea has just darted into my mind, pulling an entire sentence in its wake. I see it form, and know that this is what I’ve been waiting for, working for, struggling for, the desperately needed transition for that troubled paragraph in chapter two of my book.

The fish is swimming away. I try to hold it in my mind as I dig in my daughter’s diaper bag for a pencil and note card.

“Kimberlee,” one of the other moms calls to me, “what are you doing?”

“I’m writing,” I say. I look down at the note card. It’s blank. So is my mind. Next time, I tell myself, I’ll have a net at the ready.

5:17 p.m.

I’m chopping onions to make pasta sauce. The chk-chk-chk of the chef’s knife as it thunks into the cutting board reminds me of something, I’m not sure what. I keep chopping, and waiting for the thought to materialize. It does, shimmering in my mind like a salmon.

“Mama!”

I ignore my son’s call, drop the knife on the counter, and rush to my desk. I don’t want this one to get away.

Jack runs into the kitchen. “Mama!” I pick up a pen and start scribbling as fast as I can. “Mama!”

A thud interrupts my thoughts, followed by a piercing wail. “What was that?” I push past Jack to get to the kids’ room. Jane is lying on the floor, crying. “What happened?” I say.

“She was standing on the Lego bin,” Jack says. “I told her not to. But she didn’t listen to me.”

I pick Jane up and shush her. When she’s calm, I set her down, return to the kitchen, and stare down at the sheet of paper on my desk. Whatever brilliant thought I’d had, it’s gone now. I pick up the knife and resume chopping.

8:10 p.m.

Finally, the kids are in bed. My husband is giving them last hugs and cuddles, and I am sitting at my desk, grateful for the end of the day and the chance to write uninterrupted. I open my half-finished Word doc and begin to type, the words flowing from my fingertips onto the screen. Tonight, I have a keeper.

I can hear the conversation in the bedroom. “Can I have my flashlight back?” Jack asks his dad. (During God-blesses he shined his flashlight in my eyes, and Doug took it away from him.)

“Sure,” Doug says, “I’ll be happy to give it back to you in the morning.”

Two glass-shattering shrieks follow this revelation. Then come the tears. My daughter, frightened by Jack’s shrieking and crying, begins to scream and cry, too.

After two minutes of escalating hysteria, I get up and go help my husband with damage control.

8:37 p.m.

I sit at the computer and stare at what I wrote half an hour ago. I have no idea where I was going with it, or what to write next. My third little fish of the day has disappeared into the murky deep, leaving me holding an empty net. I sigh, wondering if my little fishes will come back. But even if they don’t, even if I only catch every fourth or fifth idea, every tenth sentence, I have to do this. Unless I write, I’m not me.

I begin typing again.