a heart is for love

I have been sick to varying degrees over the past couple of weeks. But yesterday the conditions were just right (I was discouraged, everything planned was easy to cancel, and Mike could help out), so I finally declared a Sick Day. Usually when I am sick enough to succumb and take a day of rest, our family becomes unmoored. Mama is...in bed? In the afternoon? The world becomes an absurd place where routines fly out the window and anything could happen. The sight of me halfheartedly gazing at a magazine on the couch at 5 pm instead of making dinner and dancing to our latest favorite song is fantastically disturbing to my kids.  

At least, it usually is. Yet on Sunday everyone was kind and accepting of my need for quiet time. Maybe my children are growing old enough to recognize that I have vulnerabilities of my own, to manage whatever anxieties that fact might elicit, and to feel some empathy for my sniffling. Maybe they are secure enough to know that a cold cannot derail everything good and true in our lives. Or maybe they were having too much fun with Papa to notice!

Mike took them to church in the morning, and later during Gabriel's nap Frances and I snuggled on the couch with our respective crafts. She took out her loom, and I made a Heart for Love, as Gabriel calls them. I first made these little hearts for the children on Valentine's Day, after finding inspiration here. A rudimentary crafter like myself relishes in this kind of small-scale project that results in something sweet, humble, and charming. I had made one for Frances on the first day of school, and everyone in the family took turns closing their eyes, solemnly clasping the heart of felt to his or her pumping-and-thumping heart of flesh, channeling all the love in the world into this new magic object. Then we ceremoniously put it in the front pocket of her backpack, because you never know when she might need a love boost during the school day.

Gabriel's school didn't start for another week, someone at Amazon dillydallied in sending his backpack, and somehow our accommodating, agreeable second child went off to his first day of school wearing a borrowed backpack emblazoned with the name Frances on it, containing neither talisman nor token. Oh, the indignity! Cheerful fellow that he is, this state of affairs bothered me far more than anyone. When his robot backpack finally did arrive, I knew I needed to make his heart immediately.

Watching me, Frances asked if she could make a pillow for Little Will, one of her stuffed animals, using the same blanket stitch. Amazing thing #1: she let me teach her, without a single feather ruffling. Amazing thing #2: she did it. All by herself. But a few short months ago, I don't think she would have had the patience and fortitude to see something like this through to the end.

But there it is, making life a little cozier in the menagerie at the foot of her bed. 

No one uttered a single protest when I retreated upstairs to read a novel in bed later that afternoon. I sank into the pillows and listened to Gabriel's funny little voice drifting through the open window as he and Mike planted kale seeds in the garden below. I so rarely get a chance to stand back (or lie back, as the case may be) and observe my growing family. My children are big, capable creatures who can easily withstand both a sick Mama and a tangled piece of thread. I didn't know that.

It's easy to fall into the rhythm of tending to dependent little ones, anticipating needs and becoming accustomed to the responsibility of being needed oneself. Ah, but they don't need me in the same way anymore. It's a good thing, I know, but part of me is lingering in another time that has very nearly passed, like a child at the playground who is not quite ready to leave.

Five more minutes, okay?