Besides writing, I occasionally play with collage art for a creative outlet. This scene is actually a composition of six different pictures. One of the things I'm drawn to in doing this kind of art is making an entirely new landscape out of images from several different sources and playing with perspective.

Growing up I thought my mom was so tall. Like stilt-walker tall. I don't have many specific early memories, but I keenly remember staring up at my ginormous mom towering over me, her legs rising over me like redwoods, sure that she must be one of the tallest women in the world.

In actuality, Mom was 5'4".

One time I heard our elderly neighbor's landscapers and later noticed the leaves in our yard gathered into piles. I couldn't believe the nerve he had to send us a message by having his landscapers blow our leaves. Husband knocked on his door to straighten him out. As soon as he mentioned the leaves, the old guy, who had a bad heart and a false eye, said he was sorry he couldn't pick the leaves up, but he was just too exhausted after raking them.

A few months ago Wee One was waiting for the computer as I finished checking email.

"Oh Mom," she observed with tender pity, "you have a folder called 'Rejections'."

A few months earlier I would have looked at her with chagrin. How nice it was to be able to laugh and explain that I didn't use it anymore.

And don't get me started on going from complaining about toys strewn around the house to cherishing the sight of them.

It's all about perspective. Things can be perceived so differently depending on time, distance and attitude.

As one daughter leaves for college and another enters middle school, as I come to a startling realization of how old I'm getting when I find out Lance Armstrong is a year younger than me (I don't know why, but that one blew me away), as I heed advice and revise a manuscript or read books with exceptional writing, as I accept that things aren't always neat and tidy and life still goes on, I'm gaining perspective.

And wadda-ya-know, the view is so much clearer from the vantage point of an open mind.