Nearly everything about this day was perfection: oatmeal topped with blueberries and almonds in an unhurried morning, a day spent with some of my favorite classes, insightful and rich discussions of a work of literature I deeply love but infused with laughter and a willingness to not take ourselves too seriously all the time, an afternoon enjoying wine and conversation with a couple of my favorite people, an early-evening run in the sunshine. Oh, the sunshine. I am a Pacific Northwesterner (after living here for my entire adult life, after living in our little house near the shore of Puget Sound longer than I've lived in any other house, ever, I've decided I get to say that) and I love the rain, I do, but this winter has been exceptionally long and dark and my soul craves the sun. Whenever the clouds break long enough to let the light through, I just want to be outside, breathing and moving. Yesterday afternoon I laced up my running shoes and hit the streets, and shortly into my second mile the sky opened up. The rain pounded, soaking my shirt, and I ran with water dripping into my eyes and off my face, but I could see sunshine over the rooftops not far away. A sunshower. I smiled while I ran, because while I resist beginning a run in the rain, I secretly love nothing better than being caught in a downpour when there's no other choice but to just keep going.
These small moments are everything to me right now.
It has been a dark winter and an even darker spring. My school community is grieving the loss of two students and a staff member, all beloved in different ways. One of my best high school teachers once told me a long time ago that grief is a messy trickster and doesn't respect boundaries, and in the last few weeks that trickster has shown its face and made a terrible, terrible mess.
But in the midst of that mess, there is also this: the exquisite artistry of our ordinary lives. Sinking into a steaming bath with a book after my run. My children in their most unselfconscious moments: curled up on the living room recliner with a book, or constructing something with Legos or Tinker Toys or Construx. A text from my husband, wondering if brownies and non-dairy coconut milk ice cream sound good tonight. The clouds come, the rain returns, and we move comfortably around each other in the kitchen. I'm wearing pajama pants before dinner. My husband beats an egg, stirs it into the batter. Our children grumble and shove at each other, battling for equal space on the couch in the family room while they watch a movie. My son changes into pajamas, tossing his torn jeans on the floor of his bedroom -- what in the world happened there, I ask, pointing. What started as a small rip at the knee has become a large rectangle of torn denim, flapping away from his shin. Oh, I don't know, it just ripped, he says.
He runs over to kiss my cheek, sloppily, but then he's gone again.
My daughter and I come to a head: she overreacts to something and I snap at her, another overreaction. I imagine us in a mirror. I breathe. I'm sorry, I say. I didn't need to say it like that. And she moves into my embrace. She is so tall that I can barely rest my chin on her head.
Some days I feel so acutely that this is where my heart begins and ends. I want to live in each moment forever; I feel a small, tightening panic at the passing of time. I think about how new mothers are encouraged to train their babies to sleep away from the comfort of their breasts, and how glad I am, all these years later, that I nursed my own well into toddlerhood. I will never, ever regret falling asleep with my babies snuggled against my skin, even as I worried that we'd never sleep again. I wouldn't wish them backwards, wouldn't wish them back to babyhood, but dwelling in those moments and trying to capture them--knowing that I couldn't stay in them forever--has been the most joyous work of my life.
Tomorrow is promised to none of us. I am so aware of that right now. I also plan and fret with the best and most neurotic of humans, but at the same time I believe, more than anything, in staying present. In breathing this breath, right now. In holding my family, right now, tonight. In loving the ordinary moment, in staying present in it.
In loving. Really, that's it. That's the thing.
When Suzannah was small, a toddler, I taught her our code: three little squeezes of the hand means I. Love. You. Always. A message we could share in a crowd, hustling through a grocery store, a signal, a softness when we struggled through a tough afternoon. We could say everything without having to say anything. Later, I passed it on to Isaac as well. In the mornings, when I drop them off at school, I reach back for their hands. They are scrambling for their backpacks, ready to wave to their friends, ready to run away from me and into a day that is theirs, but first, every single morning, there is this: the moment when our hands connect over the seat. I reach back. Their fingers find mine. And every morning, this is our last touch: I. Love. You.
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