You are already eight. And you are only eight.
Today as I watched you,
I glimpsed the man you will become.
It was beautiful.
You were beautiful.
And I felt grateful to be your mother in a whole new way.
This shall be an era of motherhood I will savor.
My son of eight years,
within you lies infinite possibility.
You grow my heart bigger and stronger everyday.
There’s a little one in this house who I call my baby. But the reality is we’re starting to get a feel for the emerging boy.
True to his first two years of life, he is joy. He’ll be a glass is half full kind of guy. Heck, I think he’s beyond glass is half full. He’ll just joyfully celebrate that there is water and drink up!
He’s a caretaker. As lover of animals, he’s got a predictable gentle touch and a sweet, soft voice reserved for all things furry. His favorite books feature horses and kittens. He’ll turn to the same page over and over. The page with the horses running in the snow to the farmer bringing them fresh hay.
He’s an adventurer. Always on the look out for a high climb, a big jump, or a fast slide. There’s little need for worry though. He knows his limits pretty well and I can trust him to heed my warnings. He’s a sensible adventurer. I love that about him.
We are relishing these fleeting years: I love to steel glimpses of him sleeping, his bum in the air. As we sit down to dinner, he extends his hands to family, and smiles as we say the meal blessing. A few minutes into the meal he’ll grab hands again, ready for another blessing. Sometimes we have five or six blessings. He loves to caress my face to tell me he loves me – no words needed. He speaks so clearly with his eyes and hands. And he sings. Oh how he sings!
He is joy. Pure and simple.
Happy Birthday Little Berg.
There’s a gluten-free, dairy-free pumpkin pie in the oven. The house smells delicious as I sit at the table sifting through photos from years past. I’m making sure we have pieces of the past to hold on to. Little tidbits that will help us tell the stories that make us each who we are.
There are so many places we have called home. Each one conjures memories of a time in each boy’s life. Time is frozen, in a sense, in the places we have left. G-man will forever be a babe in a sling in Edwards and a fire fighter at Eagle Rock; E-man a chicken-loving four-year-old in Taos and a backhoe-obsessed boy who sings when he talks in Edwards, and B-boy will forever be a wandering toddler at Eagle Rock and a playground daredevil in Louisville. I guess we grown ups are a bit frozen in those places, too. Or maybe those places are a bit frozen in us. Either way, it’s nice.
But, I do wonder how it will feel to look back in time from a single place. It’ll be a while before we get there. It will simply take time (and not moving!) to look back at years already lived in one place while still standing in that same place. I look forward to experiencing that one day. It’s been a while.
G-man crawls on my lap as we both look to B-boy to see if he’ll notice. (He’s not sharing his mama so well.) But B-boy is busy climbing to the top of the dining table and the kitchen counter in search of ice cream bowls to lick. He sings the best rendition of Twinkle, Twinkle. Ever. He zooms in to put a soft hand on my face, utters a lilting Mama, and gives me a quick but intense twinkling gaze that says I love you. E-man, mesmerized by the vastness of the universe and in love with the idea that we are just floating in space around a star, delights in the work of astronauts as they repair Hubble on the Nova special we are watching. He is sad at the idea that Hubble may die, never to be touched by human hands again, and then enlivens at the thought that he could be the astronaut that returns to space one day to repair a magnificent telescope — all thoughts that seem so grand, but so perfect, for this almost-eight-year-old boy. G-man, the boy who seems so clear about his path to become a fire fighter, declares he will never be an astronaut because it isn’t safe. His whole heart believes in safety, kindness and goodwill. And I, in this perfect ordinary moment, have the most profound connection to the fact that there are no boundaries between any of us. That we four sitting there watching a Nova special are not actually four separate beings, but just part of the Great Mysterious soup along with everyone and everything else. And at that moment everything is perfectly clear. We are. Love is.
things we’ve been loving on this new-to-us patch of Earth:
bullfrogs and tadpoles
wild plums and crab apples
a red tree against the morning sky
bike rides to the library
weekends that are entirely ours
crunchy leaves
lots of crunchy leaves
crunchy leaves that don’t fall from trees until October!
evenings that are entirely ours
playgrounds we can walk to
brothers to catch and guide at the playground
cattails and blackbirds
big fat squirrels
dog parks
climbing trees
summer in the fall
big snows that melt
This weekend I ran over roads I’d never run before, past trees I’d never seen before. Brown cottonwood leaves rustled in the wind, but the trees were still green (crunchy leaves were from times passed). Only a few bits of yellow hung from branches, hinting at the changes to come.
Our life so beautifully mirrored in the trees: hints of color foretelling the changes to come.
We’ve said some painful goodbyes to beloved spaces in this last month. I had hoped to share my gratitude for the experiences offered by our borrowed home at Eagle Rock. But words weren’t right. The teachings of a place so deep and vast will stay with us in the crevices of our souls, and that is where they belong. It would be a disservice to try to characterize something so great with my small words. It would like taking a river, wrapping it in shiny paper, and putting a bow on top.
So here we are in a new place with a slow fall and bullfrogs. Paved streets and playgrounds. Wild plums and green grass. Earned wisdom and new dreams.
While I needed to honor this important time in our life, that’s all the breath I can give it for now. Time to tuck away the heaviness of learning what we love by leaving and step out anew to the freshness of living today.
I’ll be back soon.
I have a tendency to write and not publish. I have this foolish idea that each post should include at least one picture. (Really, I think that’s what all of the boy admirers out there want, to see the boys as they grow up.) The fact is I enjoy words more than pictures, so there are dozens of posts that get lost in my “drafts” folder. I flipped through a few drafts today and enjoyed feeling a bit of time that has passed.
FRENCH TOAST scribbled hastily over a grocery list written carefully in cursive.
Those were the words I left my husband with — an idea planted for the morning meal accompanied by a skillet of frozen strawberries as inspiration — as I walked out the door to drink my coffee in the meadow watching the sun rise, hoping to return to cheer and peace.
I will look back at these mornings and weep as I remember their richness: the sleepy eyes, the pajama hair, the greetings of innocent voices, the screams of hunger, the bodies thrown on the floor when the perfection of dreams is not met — when there is porridge instead of pancakes.
The early hours are so fragile: a time between two worlds, when the littlest amongst us require such careful ushering from one world to the next, the reality of morning perhaps more difficult for those who live partially in their dreams all day.
It is a time filled with hope, delicate hope, hope we can hold onto or exchange for despair. I’ve tried both; the latter is easier. Some days I hold onto hope. I smile and sooth; I keep moving through the morning thinking, thinking, thinking I am grateful for this gift of another day.
Perhaps these are the most important moments of our lives: when we choose to hold onto hope in the space between dreams and reality. (And we get to practice every single day.)
I will look back at FRENCH TOAST scribbled hastily over a grocery list written carefully in cursive and remember these mornings, these difficult mornings, as some of the best moments of my life.
He is my wild child…
May the world never tame him.
It’s this time in a wee person’s life that I would like to linger. A time when small, seemingly insignificant things are the best reminder of the magic, the wonder, the mystery that we adults must work so hard to stay connected to.
A pile of knitting needles, a handful of pebbles, a soft bunny, a fly, a spool of thread, a cup, a worm, a fresh picked juniper berry, a ball — all as great as the entire universe. The entire world is reflected in his eyes. Can’t we pause here, for just a little longer?
G: I’m going to be a baseball player when I grow up. What are you going to be when you grow up, Mommy?
Mommy: Hmm…a botanist.
G: What are you going to be when you grow up, Daddy?
Daddy: A musician.
G: Are they good guys or bad guys?
Note: Sharpie markers can be used as a replacement for eye black as well as darkening hand and face skin so you can look like your favorite baseball player.
