"It's a football helmet! He's on the Cowboys!" enthused my dear boy, who has permanent sports-on-the-brain.
Yesterday we hosted three of Gabriel's friends from preschool, so I made a big batch of our favorite play dough. (There really is nothing like manipulating this stuff; it's a shame we adults don't have more opportunities to squish and roll and flatten in our lives.) Then this morning I had a sitter come over so that I could work on the child abuse prevention article I mentioned recently. In the freakishly springlike sunshine I walked to a cafe, where I got to feel independent and productive, sipping coffee from a wide elegant cup and typing away with only the sounds of muffled adult conversations and frothing milk to distract me.
I returned when the weather turned gray and windy to find my smiling boy covered in mud and ready for lunch. After a quick meal, we sat down with our freshly made play dough, the nature basket, and a CD of some new favorite story-songs (that I'm hoping to tell you more about here soon). For awhile we sang along and planted pine cones in the play dough, waiting for inspiration. But after I made that first long-haired football player, more and more teammates followed.
It was a perfect morning, balancing outside and inside, movement and stillness, being alone and being together, creating and caring. I'm trying to be more intentional about noticing these moments of abundance, rather than ruminating on what I lack, resisting the urge to ask Why can't life always be like this? in favor of another kind of question: Isn't it a gift that life is like this today?
Now the raindrops are bouncing lightly off the deck railing outside our big window and the gutters sound like a burbling mountain brook; there is something reassuring about it. Do you think it is possible to yearn always for greater, more glorious things and yet feel a whisper of completeness in the present moment? To be deeply rooted and pulled out and up at the same time? Motherhood is the hardest job, but when I remember to slow down and be attentive, sometimes a window cracks open, offering a glimpse of what that kind of fecundity might be like.
Like I was saying: play dough is the best.
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