Best. Spam. Ever.

Before the events of last week, I wasn’t sure about the future of this blog. After all, even my spammers are bored to tears with all my moaning and groaning:

I can tell that this is not the first time you mention the topic. Why have you decided to write about it again?

It’s a first—a spam commenter who actually read my blog!

Snort.

So, yeah. I was on the verge of taking this monster private, all 475 posts. I’m writing every day for money and my kids probably think this laptop grows out of my thighs. What I witnessed this week reminded me that every day—every minute—with my family is unbearably precious.

I see my babies in new way. I actually see them. Every detail of their sturdy/fragile little bodies. I listen to their hearts beating. I breathe in their scent and listen to the timbre of their small voices. I hear magic in my daughter’s stories and songs.

And the boy … oh! The boy. I do not take his babyhood for granted. Easter Sunday he clambored up the stairs, an adoring audience at his feet, turning to look at us with every step conqured. His face, so joyous, made my heart ache with the knowledge that life is all so fleeting.

Monday I recalled my wedding day, seven years ago. It rained so hard, all day long, that I was denied my right to preen in front of the neighbors in my beautiful silk gown. Instead, I held my dress up around my thighs and turned to my father, the scent of exhaust in my nose.

“Daddy,” I said, with a naughty grin. “I just love the smell of napalm in the morning.”

He laughed, a big belly laugh, getting my joke, as he always did.

Later, after an emergency call to the club to secure a valet for our guests, my father and I stood in the vestible of the church, waiting.

He patted my gloved arm. “I love you,” he said, simply.

Then he gave me away.

I have been angry at my husband for a long time. I resented him for uprooting me, for forcing me to leave behind what I knew. I was angry, very angry, last week, when he told me that what we’ve done here in Chambana might all be for naught.

I hated the idea of living on borrowed money, and not enough of it.

Now, I know we are living on borrowed time.

All the anger left me last week as I watched thousands of strangers loving people they’ve never laid eyes on. Me, the entrenched cynic, cried openly at the words flying arcoss a computer screen. Then I closed my laptop and opened my own heart to my own life.

I wasted a lot of time.

I fretted about stats and comments and popularity, and now I know the true meaning behind all these stories I tap out on my keyboard.

I am writing my own history.

Someday, when the children are gone and the sunset is closer, I will have a time machine. I will be able to look at my family as they were, through the prism of the past.

That spam comment, it gets to the heart of it all: Why have you decided to write about it again?

Because I am writing my heart.