The weather is different today and my moods seem carried by it. I’ve a new office. An office with a window. Below the window I have planted sunflowers and morning glories but those are still a long way off. The sky is overcast but that is saying too little. Although covered with clouds, the clouds are white and bright, suffused with light. The mountain has snow on it – something unheard of here. From my window I watch the wind whip the open handed fronds of a fan palm. I feel wild and restless and accomplish nothing today. Today is a day of being restrained behind a glass window and further restrained behind a desk. My mind roves through my life. And settles where? On my children, my spouse, my aging self. Life is so simple and yet oh so very complicated. I look at old pictures of my children and realize that bit by bit, day after day I have watched something precious happen and like a butterfly wing, I cannot hold it in my hand for fear of rubbing the velvety coating off. I cannot hold onto time or life or a child’s infant years. It is fleeting at best. I am wistful and sad. And I vow that tonight, when my son is complain-whining his way through the evening, I will break through his truculence somehow and I will connect with him and hope that this will be one more in a series of memories he builds of he and me. Something for him to look back and hold dear and be wistful for – something when I am dead and gone. I will not yell at my older son for jumping off the couch – not tonight. Tonight I will grab his hand and urge him to leap higher. And I won’t insist he sit at the table and practice writing his name again in preparation for kindergarten. No not this night. Tonight after the children are in their beds and their breathing is slow and regular, I will reach for the warmth of my man lying at my side. I will pull him to me and into me and I will stop thinking about life and its meanings; I will be fully alive and in the moment. I will stop swimming and let myself be carried by the current of life.
Lena Baron said,
March 9, 2010 at 8:31 pm
So good to read from you again!!;) I feel your mother heart, because it is much the same as mine.