Is it time to conga?

As I sit here with my feet up, there is a party happening in my belly.  And for once it is not the result of my indulging in some decadent recipe found during my daily trolling of the food blogs.

I am very pleased to announce, to those of you who have not yet heard our good news, that our family is waiting.  We are waiting for a lot of things.  We are waiting still for kindergarten.  6 more days, six-year-old WJ will proudly tell you if you ask.  We are waiting for our annual family Labor Day weekend getaway.  All of us look forward to a day at the pool.  We are waiting to soundly have an understanding of what it means to take life slow.  We make progress here and then forget a lesson or two.

But it is with the most joy and hope that we are waiting to meet in earnest the baby who is, as I type, getting down-you might say-at her own personal dance party that can be found just above my bladder and just below my rib cage.  I am beginning the eighth month of this pregnancy and our daughter offers at every possible opportunity a reassurance of her vitality and strength. 

Praise be.  It is good to wait.

Impossible

Photo by SF Knitter

If you are a mother, and probably even if you are not, you know the joy of finding the impossible moment when you can do just want you needed and wanted to do.  For me that is usually a long walk. 

The stars aligned today.  A good night’s sleep, waking on time, clean exercise clothes, a couple of hours when my child would be busy with someone other than myself, work completed, a silent cell phone, cooperating weather, even a few extra minutes to update my iPod (which was charged) with new music.  Impossible.

After delivering WJ to school I set off in the sunshine for a brisk walk along the waterfront.  Did I mention the weather?  Warm sun, cool breeze.  Impossible.

It was in the middle of this impossible moment when I spotted the springtime ducks swimming in the river.  There is just nothing like the fuzzy sweetness of a downy duckling swimming obediently behind its mother.  Multiplied by seven, I had to stop and watch.  And stopping I saw more.

Mama Duck was slightly frantic, more than slightly, as she ushered these seven young ones along the Hudson River.  “Relax!” I wanted to yell to her,  “Look around at this day!”

But it was I who looked around.  Behind her and the new babies rose up the skyscrapers of a metropolis.  Yards beyond her in the water, ferry boats zoomed commuters to work.  A giant barge chugged by.  Strange debris floated all about.  The strong current pulled out towards the sea.  The mother’s eyes darted in search of safety.  Her pace was too quick.  And the ducklings were pulled unexpectedly close, touching her and each other as they swam. 

Photo by Katherine "Cody" RobinsonIn that frantic mother duck, I saw myself.  I saw most of us.  I am bringing my child up right here right alongside of her.  Steel and concrete tower around us.  People and time zoom by and we dart along trying to keep the pace or keep out of the way.  I walk my child down streets that have known screaming and hatred and parked SUV’s that sometimes smoke and sometimes tick and sometimes are filled with destruction meant for the likes of me.  Cars crash, planes fall out of the sky, children vanish, the media bombards, abuse poisons.  Mama Duck and I, and probably you, face an impossible task.

Last weekend I had the privilege of attending a benefit concert for New City Kids Church, an amazing ministry in this area that is making an impossible impact on the lives of the children about whom we often forget.  Kids growing up right here, along with mine, along with the ducks.  Recording artist, Sara Groves, sang these lyrics that night.  They were on my iPod this morning thanks to those extra minutes and aligned stars:

"We are pressed on every side; Full of fear and troubled thoughts; For good reason we carried heavy hearts."

For good reason. 

Heavy heart and darting eyes.  I too search each moment for the safety I can find, places to huddle and hide.  And I pull my child close.  Maybe too close.  And I move fast.  Too fast.  For good reason.

I have good reason to think it impossible to offer freedom and independence to my child.  I have good reason to hold him too close.    

No? 

Do you wonder about this?

Do I have the hope and trust that I need right now to provide enough space for my child’s roots to grow without crowding?  Can his sprouting leaves catch the sunlight or does my shadow hover too close?  Will his trunk grow strong around its broken places or will it wither and bend as an overzealous gardener pokes and prods too much with misguided protection?

It seems impossible to me, and probably to Mama Duck too, but the time is coming when we will let the ducklings wander a little farther from us.  And soon even out of our sight.  And soon even off to make a way of their own.  Will the Mama Duck rejoice as they waddle away?  Will she swell with anticipation and pride?  Will I? 

I hope so.  Because there is good reason.  Sara Groves’ song continues:

"For good reason hope is in our hearts… For good reason this joy is in our hearts…"

Letting go begins at birth.  It begins before birth when everything happening to the child is tucked away and hidden and there is no way to know if all is well.

For good reason I hope.  I have joy.  I relax.  This child is not mine alone.  It is an impossible task for me but it is not impossible.

What seems impossible to you?

Signs of spring

It is with a great ferocity that I am greeting the spring this year.  The winter seemed particularly long and dim.  Mine may even have been a two-year winter. 

Even on a day like today with rain sprinkling down slowly on us all, I just want to be outside.  Walking the streets, I am unlocked.

This spring my heart is gathering with the sunshine as if we two are long-distance loves finally reunited.  We have forgotten all flaws and hurts.  Together again, we are consumed with remembering each other.  The rest of the world slips away. It is just the two of us and everything is perfect.

There is a favorite day with my preschool class each year.  It is the day when we trudge through whatever horrible early March weather is being offered to us on a search for the first signs of spring.  The children are bundled in their layers, eyes barely peaking out from the wrappings.  They get confused because when we step outside, instead of heading east into the park, we turn toward the west and cross the street into the nearby apartment complex where the grounds people faithfully planted bulbs in the fall. 

A year ago on this day there were still inches of snow on the ground and the sprouts peaked out from the snowy drifts triumphant.  The children responded appropriately.  Upon seeing the green showing through the snow, they began to rejoice, jumping and spinning, dancing and running wild with excitement. 

This year’s group got quiet at the sight of the signs of a coming spring.  They crouched low and their pudgy fingers collectively reached out to touch.  Their world is so much in the present, I could tell they had forgotten that there is green. 

I had forgotten too.  The flowers blossoming on the pear tree outside of this window and the leaves pushing out of buds on the trees in the park, these are the sweet, soft colors of the spring.  They will be with us for only a moment.  I want to see them and be with them and grow silent in their presence.  I too want my pudgy fingers to reach them, touch them, remember them.

As we come to the end of this March, it is fierce.  In like a lamb.  Out like a lion.

This post is part of Steady Mom’s 30 Minute Blogging Challenge.  If you are a blogger, why don’t you give her Tuesday carnival a try?  It is a great way to get a midweek post up without ignoring your other responsibilities… for more than 30 minutes anyway.  This post, start to finish? 28 minutes!

Doing it all

We cannot do it all. 

Say it with me, ladies (and gentlemen, if you are out there, chime in too). Seriously.  Stand up, throw back your head and let’s whoop together in our outside voices:

We cannot do it all!

I say “we” because I know that we have this struggle together, this struggle for a life that is full of the things we love and need to do, the things our children and families need and love.  Our marriages.  Our work.  Our desire to be fully human and humane and participating in the world.

But we cannot do it all.

This is a realization that I come to regularly.  About twice a day.  Easily.  And I say this hanging my head with a due degree of shame… each and every time I discover it I am just as surprised as I was the first time.

My morning dose of this reality came as I was standing in my underwear in the gym locker room, looking into a gym bag that contained no sneakers. 

I can do quite a bit.  I will not bore you with the list, but I actually did do quite a bit today before foiling my own attempt at squeezing a workout into it all.

The second dose is coming right now as I sit here beside a sniffling boy who started the day with some sneezes, which then progressed slowly to glassy, baggy eyes and listlessness.  I am looking at him and sighing deeply and thinking about how this is the afternoon before I have a busy, booked-every-second kind of day at work.

I cannot do it all.

But there are things I can do. I can hold the door for that woman struggling with her stroller.  I can tuck my sniffling boy in and bring him tea. I can be kind.

And I can stop for a bunch of budding willows at the corner store.  I can bring a little bit of beauty into our home.  Something to gaze at just now, to remind me that at the end of this winter there will be spring. 

This is just a season. 

It is always just a season and there will always be spring.