Here I am.
Eating an organic frosted cherry toaster pastry - also known as the "hippy Pop Tart", crashing my ultra clean eating streak. Because the kids are at school and the house is mine alone this morning for the only time this week and foreseeable future, and because the dandelion tea I've been sipping off and on this week is making me lose it a little.
I savor the low thrum of Nina Simone radio on Pandora as incense smoke wafts in mysterious trails behind my computer and out the open window. The warmer air has finally arrived. It's as if I can pull a layer of myself off and toss it away to compost back into the earth where it came from, grateful but even more grateful to be done with it. We've grown through another year of school. With my birthday next week, I've almost completely grown through another year of my life.
Which brings me to here, where I am.
Just this morning I was upstairs when I heard the sound of bone crashing into something hard. Like a ghost, I instantly appeared in harm's way, in front of Sullivan who was blue from a mouth of silent open pain and tears. I have to tell him to breath. As pink returns to his face and sobs emerge in deafening crescendos, I look for blood, feel for the goose egg. I see the moment he slipped out of my body again - the beginning of life so extraordinary we literally forget to breathe. I wrap him in my arms and carry him to a chair where we fold down together as one, warm tears dripping on my arm - the salty drips drying pale white; mama tattoos.
Writing this down. Writing to remember. Writing to validate that we are here and that is worth everything.
"We are all creators in our own lives... With acute, awake, heart-outside-my-body, every-pore-open-attention. With strikes and stings that jolt me into the beautiful now. With overcoming and running away and knowing that every bit of ordinary is a precious, earned gift in my life. And life is urgent, because time is winning the race." -Amy Grace, writer and photographer
| all photos by Theo, except the photo of Theo which is by me. |
