Steady

My mantra for this season of life has been steady. When I think about all the work shifts coming up and the time I’m losing with the kids and the frantic passing of my minutes and all the boxes to be checked before the start of the next day, I repeat it over and over and over until the world ceases spinning.

Steady. Steady. Steady.

There are these small moments when time seems to regain its appropriate clip and I am so wholly filled. I spent an hour this morning lying in bed with Asher, listening and engaging with the intricate workings of his imagination. He is, of course, Emily the train. And I needed to sleep and then wake up to a breakfast of toast. But I should mind not to eat the plate, just the toast. Plates are not for eating. He feared I was cold, so ran to the next room to grab another blanket with which to cover me. And then we snuggled for approximately two minutes before he had to get busy again, immersing fully in a world with people and ideas and beauty I had forgotten exists. All our children are, I think, a reminder of our better selves.

It is these small, slow moments, which leave me with the capacity to tolerate the others that feel so utterly bursting with chaos. They leave me less desperate and less in need of the reminder to breathe. They are so precious and fleeting and lovely that there is no need to remind myself to be anything except precisely in the moment, with tears often welling in my eyes because I know they will be gone far too soon. And in a note taken from Vonnegut, I try to remind myself to say, “Well if this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.” It seems to me the very best and important of all the moments are those that are just so very, very nice. So very simple. So very slow. So very, very jarring in their boredom. Without bells and luxuries and expense; just the people we cherish the most in the same place with good music and good food and an eagerness to share company.  Even if the particular company is not yet three and consumed entirely with washing his hands and hanging out with his train buddies and the Storm King who comes down from the sky any time snow is in the forecast.

With time compressing and augmenting and the days being ever so long but so frighteningly short, I have been doing a lot of reflection on relationships. I am perpetually in a dance, coordinating my life and a thousand different details and people and I don’t know that I have ever taken the time to really prioritize those walking the same path I am, with a similar gait and pace and direction and heart.

I have recently connected with a lot of humans from my past and have been awestruck to find myself so reflected in their own worldview and journey and priorities. I don’t think it is solely a matter of shared experience, but the magic of finding a person who shares your heart and who is willing to find the time in a life spinning out of control to share a glass of wine and commiserate about how very hard and unceasingly beautiful this all can be. Because it seems to me that the relationships that matter the absolute most are those that remind you both of who you were and who you are and the person you would one day like to be. They shed the years and the stress and the worry and remind you of the person you were when you were not quite three and you were likely a train who would not eat plates but would rejoice in the arrival of a monarch from the sky who throws snow toward the ground with absolute zeal (while sporting both a crown and cape, of course).