Meredith Carson... Across the Pond and Back Again...

I don't exactly know where to begin. Sometimes I feel compelled to state the obvious.  Bear with me.  I am a little slow, and "the obvious" is not always so obvious to me. I live with three children.  All of them are very comfortable leaning on, nuzzling into, and generally treating my body like a beanbag chair.  Most children are like that.  My daughters think nothing of climbing into my bed and burrowing into my flesh as though I were a favorite cushion.  There is great security in that kind of physical intimacy.  Children know this.  We are all born knowing this, but at some point we forget.  We grow up.  We become independent.  We stop snuggling close to our mamas and friends. (At least most of us do.)  Not too long ago my eldest daughter told me, "Mom, I just cannot even imagine you being a kid.  You are just SO boring and grown up."  I tried not to take offense.  I am her mother, after all,...

How can I write when there are so many entertaining distractions at my house?  Why just this morning, when I could have been writing or reflecting deeply on the meaning of existence, I instead played "Scattercat," a game very enthusiastically invented by my two year old.  The game is initiated when she, while sitting in my bed, asks innocently, "Mom, will you be Scattercat?"  If the answer is yes, then I get to take on the persona of a bipolar cat.  She typically shoves me under the covers where I protest with growls and hisses. Then she asks in a sweetly cooing voice, "Scattercat, are you okay?  Are you being nice?  Do you want to pat a ball?  Are you ticklish?"  Scattercat must, of course, respond to all of these queries using cat-language only, and the game will go on as long as I allow it.  I realize that this all may sound completely torturous, and perhaps it would be apart from the fact that the inventor of the game gets so excited a...