Gratitude makes the journey better and so does kindness

Tag: mothering

Unconditional Acceptance? Is What You Make Of It

If clouds were hunks of cheese and you’d take the biggest one, grate it and spread the shredded bits all over the sky, you’d get a milky-white cupola cradling early morning light like one does in a white tent.

That’s the sky this morning. It smells of roses and the noises from far away are dimmed down to a light buzz.

The street I walk on has old fences, shy cats, and garlands of head-heavy roses, bowing to the morning light. I like it. Two blocks more then I switch streets.

This one has been touched by inner city life more than I care to accept. Graffiti is not artsy but offensive. Dirty. Is offensive sprouting from artsy instincts? Creativity is a beast of many shades but is this one?

Cigarette butts and a few empty beer bottles guard the outside of a restaurant that has an intriguing sign in the parking lot. ‘The most amazing show on Earth.’ What, where? Is it a live show? Why not say more. I’ll leave it to remaining a mystery for now.

My walk to the library is complete. I drop the books into the slot (already two days late,) then I head back. The streets are still empty.

It is early Saturday morning. The boys were still asleep when I left the house. I like that. It is like they are left sleeping in a cocoon; they know some early mornings are for running or some quick errand and they usually wait in bed, reading. I like that too.

Today they are just about waking up; warm faces and fuzzy hair, trying to remember yet another dream forgotten in between the place between asleep and awake, the repository of lost dreams.

Since the first sleep after they were born, I’ve loved to watch them sleep and then wake up. The fluttering of eyelids, the first glimpse into the world they’ve missed a bit of during sleep. The smile that follows, an offering of their most inner being. I take it all, I am greedy that way. I like those moments of full acceptance. Arms wide open, eyes lazily hugging my face, slow paced sweet human beings returning from a world of their own and stepping into mine.

The day unfolds. They’ll move from sweet beings to wild, loud, mischievous, unkind and they’ll challenge me to bits. Again. I know they will.

Acceptance will wane during the day and I will logically remind myself of it. It is a trap, I know it is, and it is everyday learning… to accept my boys not when they shine in all that they do, not just when they’re sweet and surrendering to hugs, but when they simply are.

If I don’t accept them whole, how will they ever accept themselves?

I learn to do it every day, sometimes I fail, and then I try again.

As parents, we are stopped frozen in our tracks by memories of conditional acceptance. So did our parents. It is a bad spell that needs to be broken, yet there are no instructions. How to then?

We become more every day, and our children do too, all sides showing. We yearn for acceptance, in all that we are. Gracious, ungracious, sparkling, dull. If we’re loved, all sides show. And we become better.

A giant yellow swallowtail butterfly flutters around the front yard, a dance I perceive both indecisive and fascinating. Latter is accurate, and I will never know about the first. Assumptions can be traps sometimes. Still, I’d like to stop the butterfly. Beauty is captivating in a most primal way. That part of us never grows up, never becomes bored with seeing.

‘Mom, a wasp is eating the pollen off the daisy I gave you!’

Oh, let it. Little boy is not convinced. In his world, wasps are enemies, reputable ones.

‘No, it’s yours. I’ll chase it away.’

Don’t, look at it… The daisy is mine as much as it is the wasp’s. Or less? Wait, it is not pollen. I see legs. Do you see them?

‘Eww! Now I should chase it away?’

No. Let’s not. Daisies come with pollen and tiny spiders and sometimes wasps that eat them. It’s all that could be, and it’s real. Chase the part we don’t like away and then what?

Can we do that all the time? Chase the unwanted, the ugly, the scary, the parts we don’t understand or accept?

Life is unkind, ungracious, ugly at times, but fascinating in how it expands minds and souls. Real is all we get, if we’re ready to accept it. Real is what we grow from. Selecting but the good parts will never give you the full measure of what life is…

Half the sky has cleared up and it is blue. We sit on the porch steps, holding the glass with the one daisy, with many tiny spiders, with a wasp, with a chunk of life explaining itself, no shortcuts.

‘Mom, can you please make some pancakes? It’s Saturday.’

It is indeed. We always have pancakes on Saturday.

 

Night and Snow and Frozen. Again…

SidewaysIt was snowing sideways in icy sharp arrows. You had to blink often or get stung in the eyes. Muffled sounds, signs of life far away, stacks prolonged in smoky tongues meeting with low-hanging clouds, cars that stop short, afraid of white and dark combined.

We walked to the park, dragging purple sleds, snow-filled boots… wait, already? 

The park snoozes under thick snow. More coming. We’re wrapped up in snowflakes and tumbles – wild boys, and fragmented thoughts of a long day – mama.

We made it here late, borderline bedtime, but it had to happen… I guiltily wanted tired children and droopy eyes so I said yes to pleads of sledding. 

‘Mom, he doesn’t want to play my game…’

‘Because you put snow in my mouth, that’s why!’

The tumultuous world of boys, laughter and fighting landing in a pile of arms and legs and there’s no time to scold because things are patched up by the time I get there.

‘Wanna do double sleds?’ There’s no stopping them or entering their world. When big people do so, they have to leave all big-world thoughts behind, sublime and conditional at the same time. And worth it… But now it’s all tangled up, thoughts and worries and changes ahead.

Lost boysI envy their irreverent fun, all the ‘so what if that’s not allowed I’ll try it anyway and taste the no up-close,’ they do that with each other, testing boundaries, testing patience and saying I did not mean to.

I want them like that, free to tumble. Free to laugh and say no, and ask for endless sled rides down icy hills, past bedtime and deeply immersed in being children, boys lost in precious childhood.

SleepySnowfall thickens, all plushy and white. There’s sleepy branches on the ground, buried and beautifully quiet, a row of swings, gently whipped by sideways thick plushy snowfall…Swings

Time for bed, we trail home, purple sleds and wet mitts and snowy hats.

Snuggle in bed… remember to be grateful, what are you grateful for… We say prayers for all whom we love, for all who cannot hear us and for all who need one tonight.

Then again, the hardest question pops up and my eyes become squished lines…’Mom, can I be stuck at being seven forever?’

Head full of soft, long hair, smelling sweet, trying to imprint the smell in every part of my brain. To remember…

No, you can’t ask that… Because I want it too much too… But I don’t say it.

‘No you cannot, I wish you could… but you can save some of that forever in your heart…’

‘I don’t want to grow up…’ he snuggles close, maybe it’ll happen?

I feel ashamed for all the times I said the same, not an ounce of grown-up me seeping into that absurd request…I don’t want that either… Be joyful, never be afraid of life. I want to say it but I don’t. One day I will…

Snuggle some more, ruffled long hair against pillows and stuffed otter, smelling sweet… here to stay, mine…

Good night, sleep tight…

But my wishes for sleepy droopy eyelids do not come true. I leave the room with a trail of sounds and whines… There’s itchy noses, itchy elbows and that itchy spot behind the knees and all the noises a nose can make the nose makes them, so annoying, and the comforter is too hot… what a silly name for something that annoys him so…

Two wild boys, one already slipping into growing up, still hugging and wide-eyed, one clinging to every bit of sweetness that he himself brings about… Nighttime whines included.

Snowfall stops, house is quiet… Late night, no more clinging, itchiness gone, boundaries back in place until tomorrow when they’ll be pushed again… And again.

Never stop… never grow up… My eyes will be wide open tonight, no droopiness until I say out loud what I am grateful for. Again. To know, to never give in to rushing them… I promise. To make every itchy knee count.

To listen, to love, to hug… A promise…

 

 

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