Sometimes reading e-mail sends me to the incense burner with the

Sometimes I get a twinge of what my mother might feel with her children widespread and hurting. I'm sure at times she wishes she could herd us all to her with a series of chirps, gathering us huddled under her wings until danger passes. But immediately follows a comic image of eight full grown birds struggling to hide under a single old hen. As much as she might long for a little control, she just can't do it anymore, and I suppose it's debatable just how much control one ever has over life's tragic little jokes.

Being a 'List-Mom', sometimes I would like to move you, all my hurting far-flung friends, here to Arkansas to smooth your ruffled and bloody feathers, troubles and hurts, darkness and loneliness into distant memory. But Arkansas is no trouble-free zone, and I know it's your lives you must struggle through, wherever you are in the world, just as I struggle through mine, and it's all I can do to just sit and hurt with you and talk with you on this quiet dusty porch.