Woke up, my hard working husband gone, a cute little baby nestled up to me. It was as if I forgot in the night I have a baby, and when I woke up it was such a pleasant surprise.
Later he discovered his belly button and mine too.
I discovered that if I blow in his face, his wispy brown hair flutters, he wrinkles his nose and squints his eyes and tips his face back in the cutest smile that shows his gums punctuated by a few little pearly white teeth.
Made a list of positive things about my kids, so I'm armed for some positive talk; I almost cried when my sweet little three year old beamed at the words we wrote about her-- sweet, forgiving, smart. How have I never noticed how forgiving she is until just now?
Went for a run -- morning was beautiful and fragrant and air humming with insects. White moths fluttering among bending willow branches. Busy cyclists in bright pink and orange, a fair announcer echoing, parents holding toddlers on a yellow mini-train.
On the way back, I looked across a large pasture toward the mountains and thought of all the different runs I've been on in different parts of the world. For me they have come to symbolize what is great about the life I live right now. When we lived in England, my son and I had a little "forest" we'd traverse, where we'd look at bugs, he'd stand on protruding roots and say "yah!" and I'd watch the sunlight filter through those beautiful English trees. I thought life didn't get any better, and I worried that when our time there came to an end, I would leave that behind forever. Yet in every place we've lived we've found a new walk we love, coming to symbolize that there is something good about each time of life we're in, we just need to find it and appreciate it and soak it in.
Today my baby would crane his neck backward and cheese a broad, grayish-brown-eyed smile through a slit between the bright blue stroller canopy and the stroller itself. His little legs ended in chubby pointing-out toes, too small to bend with the stroller seat. I looked out over the pasture, patches of tall red, brown, and green grasses, two horses, a rickety rust train taking its time down the tracks; the mountains, velvet with spring green, pines in tall herds running imperceptibly down the mountain, a rook-shaped piece of snow melting in the peak, and giraffe-spot dapples of shade and light from billowy white clouds.
I may be working toward a destination but the best part is looking around at what I have right now. :)
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