Since 1993, I've been a mom. There have been good and bad moments but what every mother knows from the moment they see those two lines or that plus or they just know, there's a reason you don't get a period. It's that motherhood never ends. You are forever their mom. That means, when they smile at you because you brougth them a cup of hot chooclate, you get that gift, that smile that only Mom or Dad gets. When they cry out because they're hurt, you're the one they mean by that name. These are the realities of parenthood. It's permanent or meant to be, because it's how God teaches us how to love as God loves --we are all His children, and He never tires of loving us despite however messy or naughty we might be.
What I've come to know is, I stink at homework, paperwork, cleaning and potty training. I'm not too good at bedtime or demanding that people practice either. They all know how to read early on, and they almost to a person, have some artistic itch they have to scratch, be it musical, mechanical, or digital. We go through dry erase markers, colored pencils and reams of paper for almost everyone. They also all know how to cook something...no one in our house would starve, because everyone can make something. Some of it isn't very tasty --see Paul's horseradish and motzerella on a corn tortilla attempt at a pizza, but as he indicated, you can survive eating it. He wouldn't let me throw it out.
That's the real reality of all my children. We've been cleaning out drawers and donating, and they're slowly learning, it isn't abandoning childhood to not keep everything --but it's hard for them. Harder than I expected. They hold onto things the way I want to hold onto time --this time. I love having all of them home, even if it is because of a pandemic. This time is secret stolen sacred time, when we get to be a whole family for however long we get these days together.
It's not easy, and it's not what people want --because they want to be about the busyness of life. However, I see them here, eager like horses to break from the gate and I'm reminded of the poem I saw every day I attended Saint Mary's that I walked into Madeleva, Sister Madeleva's poem on the seal in the main enterance. "Why do they hurry and worry so? Can they, will they or do they know? They will earn some love, they will learn some truth, but never earn, nor learn, to gain back youth." and it's a lovely understanding of that fragile four years when a child puts away childish things, when you get formed as something of the adult you will become.
I've never learned to stop hurrying or worrying, so this forced stillness demands at least one if not the other, and the other, I'm learning to surrender bit by bit, but God's having to pry my hands from the worry, one fingertip at a time. I think each finger represents a child of mine. I love them fiercely, but haven't quite yet learned how to love them well --I think that takes now and forever, and I'm an impatient person on all fronts, even love. Sister Madeleva could write those words, I have to learn to live them before they leave, before this sacred still secret time ends. I have to store all these moments in my heart. I also have to know, that I can never turn back the pages --just like Lucy can't turn back the book to reread what she's left behind in the Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
But I take great reassurance in the continuation of their stories, and in the promise that Aslan makes to Lucy, and so also God to all of us, that He will be telling us these stories we've forgotten and cannot revisit all of our lives into eternity, when the still sacred secret time never ends.
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