Sometimes there is so much to say there is nothing to say.

This morning is like that. The sky is a clear, deep blue and winter is back yet again. Shaya looked out the doorwall and said, “Mommy! There’s snow again.” But a dusting, and yet the statement is clear: spring has a long wait though we all know it will come.

The sun is stark through the kitchen windows. Blinding from some seats but then you move to another chair and your eyes are clear. I made cottage cheese pancakes for the children. Asher read the Sunday comics. I caught wind of a lifeboat in the newspaper, though I knew it was coming.

In my head, it is Israel, vivid and beckoning like a lover. The newspaper reporter told Anthony Bourdain what a former girlfriend said about being with him: alcohol, cigarettes, great sex and even better breakfasts.

“What did you serve for breakfast?” she asked. I would have asked a different question.

And so I will fly to Israel this summer and hike and sit at sidewalk tables and learn the landscape as if I’d never been there before. Small family wineries. An urban view of my favorite place. A perfect gaze at the water, where in the past I only stopped for kosher Chinese.

As time passes, people blur like the view out a bus window. The last time I was there was an orthodox Passover. My children slept on camp mattresses and the baby wedged himself beside me. He really was a baby then, unable to get from point A to point B by himself.

I went from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv to meet a foodie in a cafe that sold croissants with ham baked between the buttery layers. I liked him and his stories of red wine in France.

And on the bus ride back, a soldier slipped into sleep as we past hills like Tuscany. His hand never left his gun, even as he slept.

I returned to the religious world where I didn’t fit anymore than I ever had. We few Americans repeated the seder on a second night while the rest of the hotel sang with freedom. Israelis poked their heads into our banquet room, wondering why we did the same thing twice.

But you’re not in the Diaspora, their glances said. You are here, in the land, among the rest of us.

Old habits die hard, I suppose. We can always find ways to punish ourselves.

Soon, we will pull on elegant clothes and go to the synagogue. Old habits die hard but new ones can be exciting, even hold promises that the old ones wouldn’t whisper.

It was cold when I trudged to the end of the driveway to retrieve the newspaper. Not too cold - cold enough to want to stand in it and breathe deeply and beckon memories of warmer times, with the supreme confidence that they will definitely return.

It had been a long time since she awoke with the rising sun rather than to the harsh trill of the alarm. At 3:30 a.m., she descended to the kitchen for pulpy orange juice and a red plastic cup of water to still her racing heart. The rest of the night passed without complication and she slept in the arms of the night as if it were the first night of all.

In the morning, work came on carefully, at a manageable pace. It was a day unlike many of the ones just past, where the minutes happened one at a time and the work was clear before her. Stay inside the lines, sang John Mayer. But she was ok if the jagged smear of crayon skirted the perimeter or even dallied in the white space.

Is it hard living inside metaphor? she imagined him asking.

It just happens, she would say, pointing to trees and birds and a low fence and limbs cut down by weather or the electric company. The moments are tangible, she would continue, like marbles. And she practically felt them inside her palms.

She remembered Aspen and Oregon and Israel and then she forced herself to stop remembering. It is now, she said aloud to the empty house. The pulse of the music reminded her of her racing heart in the night. On the wall, the colors of produce from a New Yorker cover and poems by Yehuda Amichai and J.D. McClatchy.

She had visions of what it would be like to hike in the Banyas. She didn’t know when but she knew she would get there one day and, closing her eyes, she could taste the waterfall above her.

So very hard to stay in this moment right now and not look ahead nor behind. It is. You know it because you live it because you are like almost every single person on this planet, yearning for something already been or something yet to be. But I will not fall into the sand trap of perpetuity. Not anymore.

Today, the snow fell. In the morning, I walked to the curb to retrieve the newspaper. The street was silent and still, perfect crisp ice-air and a pink sunrise so compelling I wanted to walk briskly through the neighborhood with music in my ears.

I didn’t. I went back inside and read every single newspaper from the last week that I hadn’t made time for until today. After an hour, as I worked back from Saturday to Thursday to Tuesday, I realized the ridiculousness in reading Tuesday’s news five days later. And so I dumped it in the recycle bin.

That walk that never was. And I drove in clear streets and gray skies to my destination, walked in the door, smiled upon smiles under fluorescent lighting and beaming people for hours.

When I left, the snow had been falling for a while. I’d heard tales of white-outs on the highway and slipping beneath spinning tires. It was my turn to brave the elements and I did and I slipped and I slid and I drove and I watched and I listened. At one point, I had to shut off the radio to concentrate.

But I got to where I was going and I found clarity in chakras and buzzing in my head which signified nothing more than an openness to wisdom. My heart, I was told, was in protective mode but open. Also good.

When I again steered onto snow-drifted roads, nothing fell from the sky.

The day began in soundless perfection and ended with a sunset full of hope and kindness.

In the dark of this night, I started searching on pandora for Johnny Cash or June Carter Cash, reminded as I was of their impossible soul-swallowing love. Before I could create the station, though, Joshua Radin began to play a song called Sky and it was beautiful and so I listened.

That’s the thing about the moment at hand. It’s here. Now. Held in my hand like a marble. Each note, each vibrating guitar string, each syllable of a lyric thought and felt before committed to paper.

It is dark where I sit. I am happy. Another song has begun, a good one.

If I can do anything in this, my second attempt at life, it will be to embrace this very thing happening under my feet until it morphs into the next. I cannot spend any more of my precious time focused forward on the what-ifs and the I-shoulds.

For now, I will bathe in the metaphors and taste the strawberries, even if they are out of season. The season will come as it always does and I will bend to the dirt with my children and pick strawberries plush and soft and fragrant in the fields. I will fold my tongue around them and let them melt in my mouth and bring home bags full of them so that we can all indeed taste the flavor of that day.

That’s the beauty of this life: so full of surprises and gifts, every moment like a tiny rich chocolate left on my pillow. I have so much. And I can see it like the night sky, like the sunrise, like the way the water cuts up under the sleek sheath of the boat, like the sound of the sky and the birds winging beneath drifting clouds, like the water braiding around rocks in a river always headed somewhere.

The lamb chops were pink and juicy at the center, moist and savory, crispy on the outside. Vegetables roasted to perfection - radicchio, leeks, shallots, zucchini and asparagus. The sweetness of squash souffle brought balance to the table.

“Your kitchen is so clean,” my mother remarked as we dried the dishes. “Remember how messy it used to be, when you were observant?”

It was the nicest evening in a long time, my children happy, my parents and grandmother serenely at my table, so many candles flickering against the dining room wall. Outside, it was quiet and dark; in the night it would snow and we’d awake to that blanket-peace of just-fallen whiteness that only a calm winter day can bring. 

When I said that I could no longer see the attraction of the rigid life I’d lived for a decade, my mother smiled. “I don’t have an answer for you,” she remarked.

But it wasn’t an answer I sought. It was rhetorical and it was past and the moment had moved into the kind of serenity I’d always envisioned for a Sabbath eve but somehow let slip away in the race for following-the-rules.

I’ve hugged my children more and breathed deeply today than on any Shabbat of my observant years. It’s a wonder how, when left to define ourselves without expectation or someone else’s parameters, we come up with the sweetest understanding.

Check out Six Sentences.

Every day when I pick up Shaya from preschool, he runs to me, down the hall, arms open wide, ready to jump into my arms. I can’t help myself when I see his cute round face, alight with eagerness to return to me.

I open my eyes like wings to fly and run, too, down the hall until we reach each other, both smiling and electric, and he jumps into my arms and I scoop him up and close, holding him there, breathing in his soft soft scent.

I knew motherhood was going to be spectacular but I couldn’t have told you what it would feel like until I lived it.

I write here frequently about how I miss Oregon - my one-week solo trip last summer, scaling mountains and tasting new flavors. I do. I miss the freedom to travel and the excitement of exploration.

But I don’t really yearn to be somewhere else. Vacations are wonderful because they’re rare, at least for me.

It is hard when living in the moments to recount them quickly. Because I don’t have my children with me all the time, I have more time than many parents to reflect on moments with them and savor the little details.

Last night, I dreamt that I took Eliana and Asher to a water park. Somewhere in the crowds and the rides and water slides, I lost both of them. And the rest of the dream was a frantic rush to find my babies - climbing stairs and poring through rooms.

When I finally found Asher, just before I awoke, he was one of hundreds of boys in summer-camp configuration with counselors and sitting on rows of benches. I simply called his name, “Ashi! Ashi!” And he leapt up and said, “Here I am!” And I scooped him into my arms and held him tight to me and didn’t let go. I woke up then and, eyes closed, could almost feel my son’s skinny warm body pressed to mine, his heart beating in sync with mine.

My kids are in public school now and as such, they are poised to celebrate their first Valentine’s Day this week. Eliana has been busy for the past week furiously coloring hearts that I cut out of notebook paper.

The playroom table is covered in marker streaks and those hearts, they are so damn beautiful - her little, still-pudgy hands painted in marker, too, the hearts signed Love, Eliana, her dedication to the task at hand so complete. I’ve sat there with her in a kid-sized chair, just to watch her focus and create.

My children are my everything. I’ve always resisted defining myself according to others, but you know, I have become my best self because of them. Truly.

We see what we want to see. Yesterday I walked along the Huron River and reveled in the sunshine. My hands in leather gloves dug into the pockets of my North Face jacket. A woman jogged past in running shorts.

How can the same object be shrouded in shadow and illuminated by sunlight? Can it be a good day and dismal one? Are we in a recession or did we just go out for an indulgent dinner?

The key to business success is telling good stories. And people. This Gaping Void cartoon says it perfectly - people matter, objects don’t (by the way, I LOVE Hugh’s cartoons!!! He is brilliant.)

Take that idea and further it with an idea from the Conversation Agent blog - if we apply relationship metrics to business, we will go farther than if we merely crunch numbers:

“Attraction is incremental. It goes hand in hand with attention. And it is acts of marketing that stimulate both. That’s because they connect our aspirations with experiences we appreciate and enjoy…the 4 A’s of blogging: Attract, Ask, Aspire, Act.”

Wow, it’s not just for dating anymore - the laws of attraction apply to business. The chemistry question, is there a synergy, can you believe in the history and the principles of the people behind the business? If yes, then your business is won forever.

Which means that a business, then, and its owners of course, must create a compelling story that has backbone. You can’t just be out for the bottom line because then you will definitely fail. My college boyfriend’s mother once said, “Do what you love and the money will come.” He listened. He is now one of the top actuaries in the country - after deciding mid-way through college and behind the eight ball to switch majors and focus on an obscure career with a tough road to the top.

What do you offer that is different, unusual, and necessary? Ask yourself that in the dark of the night when the shadows of the moon fool you into thinking someone is standing in the corner of your room. Ask yourself and see what you say in response.

I know the happiest man in the world: Fabrizio Casini, the produce buyer at Hiller’s Markets. He does what he loves. He palms peaches before the dawn and decides whether they’re good enough to sell in the store. He orders swiss chard and carob stalks and celery and spinach every single day and it’s what he loves, what drives him.

The other night at dinner with my friend Ingrid, I pronounced that I have yet to find my produce - that which drives me, the single thing that I love doing so much I cannot imagine doing anything else. I think I’m close, but I’m not yet there.

Still, my clients have been getting lots of media attention lately and I am responsible for that. I am doing something I enjoy, something I do well - on behalf of quality companies with principled people at their helm. The answers will come.

Like the dawn, inevitable, in succession, expected and still awesome when it arrives.

I am the daughter of an entrepreneur who has always known that building business depends upon building relationships. Mom and Dad went to dinner with potential customers and industry colleagues and Dad spent many days traveling to conventions and out-of-town scrap metal plants because face time does more to cement an ongoing business relationship than a long-distance call or today, a quick fired-off email.

Which is why I appreciate Jennifer Laycock’s assertion that social media marketing has the potential to give big business to the familiarity of a mom-and-pop. “We live in an age where we don’t have to buy our products from the big box retailer in the strip mall down the street,” she says. “…the web lets you hunt for a business that shares your values and speaks your language.”

It is hard to find someone who speaks the exact same language, even if you share a culture and a neighborhood. Who can rightly get inside my head and *know* what makes me tick?

With an unenviable national divorce rate and untold dollars spent in therapy trying to out the demons in our collective heads, I might argue that it is the rare person who finds someone speaking their language.

And yet, we try. And businesses try. And we never quite give up on the hope that one day we’ll find that someone or something that hits the mark.

I am happy to say that I have several people in my life who *get* me. Many more do not, of course, but when you find that someone who takes your call at midnight or voices the anxieties you couldn’t at 6 a.m., well, you don’t walk away.

Today, it’s 5 degrees in Southeast Michigan and my driveway is lined with strips of long-clinging ice. I’ve bbm-ed with two people and responded to dozens of emails. Six people posted compassionate comments to my FB status yesterday when I was at my wit’s end.

The world can be a small place if we let it be. Or it can be vast and full of empty spaces. I find that I am happiest when I have time and room to roam, framed by the knowledge that I will always return to familiar voices.

The most successful relationships are two-way, focused on shared goals and the understanding that bridges an inherent divide. Longevity depends upon patience and determination and a proprietary sense of calm - the knowledge that the other party will be there, even when faced with bad hair and morning breath.

A business driven by such knowledge can’t help but go the distance.

And a relationship? Isn’t it all the same thing?