Welcome!

Have you had someone leave a lasting impact on your life, long after she'd gone from your everyday? One of mine is a gal I'll call N, a friend from my time in Charlotte. Though she is younger than I, and she was just a baby lawyer when I knew her best, N taught me things that I wasn't about to learn in any number of years, if I kept on the way I'd been. How (and why) to make peach cobbler, the true meaning of the word "sassy," what was special about women from Mississippi (a lot), and the benefits of community in a solid evangelical church. N influenced my interior design sensibility and my choices of clothing, devotionals, ceramics classes and red wine.

N is now a mama of two and, apropos to this posting, authoress of a new blog called C___ Family Circus. I had just been thinking of N, in fact writing her some snail mail the other day from my recuperative bed (foot surgery), when she emailed to let a bunch of us know about the blog. Reading it was like sitting on that porch with N and meditatively listening while she commented on being a wife and mother.

This summer, I married a wonderful man with two little ones, S and R. Suddenly, I'm a wife and mother, too, with a daughter aged 5 and a son aged 3, with in-laws and changed relationships to everyone and everything in my life. For the first time, I think, I feel like less of an apprentice woman and more like N and I -- and all of you mamas out there -- have so much to teach to and learn from each other. Even better, we can just sit around on the virtual porch, notice the wonderful quotidian pleasures of life, realize the joy -- the paradise -- that everyday life really is, spend time exploring our reasons for being here, and even praise, give thanks, and pray for each other.

Thanks, N, for the inspiration. :)