It slipped my grip in an instant & clattered down, shattering glass all around my one-year-old's shoulders. The dishwasher was open & she was playing with the spoons. Glass shards littered the kitchen.
"Oh shit! I dropped a canning jar! It's gonna be okay, X, but please come help me. -I need to keep H away from this mess."
He scurried over quickly, worry, resolve, the strength of slow growing boy-into-manhood shining out from his little almost-4-year-old face. He was serious & ready for the task at hand. If there's one thing he gets a kick out of it it's enforcing rules & ordering his little sister around. I could tell he was motivated.
"Come here, H. I'm sorry, you CAN'T go over there. You HAVE to stay over here, sweet girl," he cooed, holding her fat, eager body back from the wreckage. She strained against him irritably, but he was commanding, in charge. It was amazing, really, how in control of his faculties he was in this tiny kitchen emergency.
I hustled to clean up the dangerous mess, gingerly plucking chunks of glass from the bowels of the dishwasher while he manned his baby post. We made quite a team, he & I.
When his dad got home from work he boasted, fully justified: "I protected H. I tried to keep her safe because she's my friend!" And what a friend she is going to have in a brother like that!
Monday, January 14, 2013
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
connection
It's what I feared the most about this journey before I embarked. -the intensity, the intimacy. It just seemed like too much, too absorbing, too painful in the end. And it will be. In the end. But that's good, isn't it? A life worth clinging to? My children tear the very heart out of me like no one before & undoubtedly as no one ever will again. I would do anything for them.
Before this feeling, there was freedom. Before this connection, there was clarity -the clarity of an unruffled conscience, a bright, eternal sky, an easy passage. And now my vision is muddied by the density & dirtiness of my heavy, heart-strung love. And I love it. Every minute. Well, not every minute. But most of them.
Before this feeling, there was freedom. Before this connection, there was clarity -the clarity of an unruffled conscience, a bright, eternal sky, an easy passage. And now my vision is muddied by the density & dirtiness of my heavy, heart-strung love. And I love it. Every minute. Well, not every minute. But most of them.
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