Children

It's Sunday afternoon: Terah is napping, the girls are playing monopoly and sweeping floors for me (yay), Jason is pruning and other people are milling around cleaning up from the wedding here yesterday. Yes, that post is forthcoming, but it feels like there are many things to reflect on these days and I wanted to first put up a short post with a few of my musings that have been the under current of all the activity around here. I'm thinking a lot about children, ours and the dearly loved little people in other families! The plants get a lot of attention on this blog at times, and I will be the first to admit that we got pretty excited to crunch into the first cucumbers this morning and my mouth is watering for summer gravy this week with our first romanesco zucchini. But even when I'm harvesting or chopping or cooking veggies these days, my thoughts are often occupied with thinking about life and its fragility, and our love and care for our children, which sometimes even when we do our very best the outcomes are not what we would wish for.

The other day Jason noted the words of a song by our friend, Trent Wagler, was running through his mind, particularly the line that notes that there is nothing that we have that we can't lose. In reading a bit about what inspired that song, while this is a very hard thing for us humans to accept, it was an attempt to encourage us to focus on the present moment.

I've had pieces of a Kahlil Gibran poem running through my head here and there and have included an excerpt of that below. It was first shared with me, I believe, when Kali was born and I've referred back to it often since.

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

We are journeying (tangentially and at a distance) alongside friends (family of family) who are spending their days in the PICU next to their little boy, who is a vibrant little guy just a few months younger than Terah. A virus gone awry, leaving him with a yet unclear, but currently rather grim, prognosis for a full recovery (the road will be long in even the best set of circumstances). It's heartbreaking and a journey I don't wish for any parent or child. I wish, just as I did when times were tough in my home as a child, that I could "fix it" and make it all better, and that he could be back toddling around (attempting to befriend Terah, who has always seemed almost the most nervous around children about her same size). 

The other night we had our dinner in Nora's garden. I have found myself thinking a lot about her, about our days in the PICU, about the wondering and waiting and agonizing times of coming to peace with life taking turns that we didn't really want to go along with. I thought of Jason's poem Reiterations that he wrote while working at establishing her garden and as I sat on the rocks and looked out at the gardens and mountain, this stanza was most on my mind:

And so we put together what we can: we scrape the weeds aside and mark a place where, when it needs to huddle with the memories, a heart may hide. We’ve caught a hold on changes in the calendar and seasons, have made spaces full of time: ad hoc creations. We’ve established these reiterations.

This time is hard, hard, hard for them! And none of us can really walk the road for them. But I hope so much they feel loved and surrounded with support (both tangible and intangible) and that the burden is easier to bear because of that. And that this excruciating part of their journey will not always be that - they will, I believe, be resilient and life will hold beauty and wonder in it again. That is my hope anyway!

As we near Nora's 10th birthday, I look back at this past decade and it's hard to even wrap my head and heart around all the ways that life has brought forth for us newness and life abundant, hope springing forth from ashes!

I see that in our land and gardens but most in our children. Alida's chopping things with a big knife and is developing a real knack for flower arrangements. Terah's clomping around in my shoes and eating with utensils and drinking out of a big cup. Kali's loving on her little sisters and nurturing them in sweet and compassionate ways. I feel full and overflowing when I see the three of them together, brightening up (most of the time) the spaces they inhabit. They are blooming and I want to cherish being a part of their lives and getting to have a front row seat for watching who they are each becoming, while also wanting to continually be sensitive to when I need to move aside and let them find their way, holding loosely to my own hopes and dreams for their lives but being present to who they are now and allowing them to change.