Dang, over and over each day I wish I could sit down and write down so many swirling thoughts pulsating through my head about life and religion and feelings and parenting and shining and figuring out how to help my kids see the shining and BE the shining...the good and the bad and the ugly. I wish I could huddle into my desk and write about all these emotions I'm feeling right now because it helps me to conceptualize what is happening in life.
I want to write down how it felt to watch the volleyball team win the quarterfinals last night how my heart soared when the crowd ran onto the court in jubilation...and how much I love Max's high-knee ear-to-ear excitement when something great happens on the court. And how I can hardly hold back the tears when I think about how life is changing. And how it makes me so burst with excitement and sorrow all at the same time. And how Claire and Lucy share jobs sometimes and how Lucy had a fit at dive team yesterday and how Grace and Elle are maneuvering some difficult situations lately.
But I'm LIVING it right now and soaking every second in so writing down what my kids do that is driving me nutty and the funny antics they are weaving into my days to make me smile despite the mundane racing stuff will hopefully still linger in my brain for when I can write it down to help me remember some day.
Remember. One of my favorite words.
But for today a quick sum-up of Mother's Day.
These guys know how to do it.
They made me a beautiful breakfast complete with Mother's Day cards galore.
After church we went on our traditional Mother's Day hike.
Dave and the kids were a little baffled at first that that was a new "tradition" since we had only done it one year (back HERE). I explained that Mother's Day and my birthday are the perfect days for a hike. Mother's Day is right before it gets too deathly hot here in the desert, and January is a pretty darn great time for hikes here in the desert too (back HERE).
They were a little grumpy and a couple claimed they couldn't POSSIBLY do a hike because their legs were just so very sore. Gotta keep it real that life isn't rainbows and butterflies over here in the desert :)
But I tell you what, once we got in the car everyone perked up.
...and they quite enjoyed the view from the top.
You know the one about how life is kind of hard sometimes...we can't see the top. Sometimes we can't even see where we're going or how long before we "get there," and the journey can seem too long and ominous and overwhelming. But we just have to keep plugging and when we get to the top the vista is amazing and all the effort becomes such a treasure instead of a burden.
Life can be rough. Sometimes it takes a village to help one particular person:
But life is so beautiful when you see the independence that grows from the dependence.
My sister (Saydi) sent me one of the most beautiful poems I have ever read.
Maybe it just caught me because it was Mother's Day and I was thinking so much about my dear Mother, or maybe it's just pure golden truth, but it was so beautiful to me I feel compelled to share.
THE LANYARD
The other day as I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room
bouncing from typewriter to piano
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
I found myself in the "L"section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word, Lanyard.
No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one more suddenly into the past.
A past where I sat at a workbench
at a camp by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid thin plastic strips into a lanyard.
A gift for my mother.
I had never seen anyone use a lanyard.
Or wear one, if that's what you did with them.
But that did not keep me from crossing strand over strand
again and again until I had made a boxy, red and white lanyard for my mother.
She gave me life and mild from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted teaspoons of medicine to my lips,
set cold facecloths on my forehead
then led me out into the airy light
and taught me to walk and swim and I in turn presented her with a lanyard.
"Here are thousands of meals" she said,
"and here is clothing and a good education."
"And here is your lanyard," I replied,
"which I made with a little help from a counselor."
"Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth and two clear eyes to read the world." she whispered.
"And here," I said, "is the lanyard I made at camp."
"And here," I wish to say to her now,
"is a smaller gift. Not the archaic truth,
that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took the two-toned lanyard from my hands,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless worthless thing I wove out of boredom
would be enough to make us even."
--Billy Collins
Choked me up.
Isn't motherhood grand?
I'm so grateful for my mother who took on lanyard after lanyard like it was the best thing that ever happened to her, and kept giving, and giving, and giving, and still gives.
Love her forever.