Please give a warm welcome to our guest today, Pattie McBride of Butterfly Nautilus, talking about her moments of gratitude. What a great topic to kick off the week!
This morning I listened to the quiet.
It started off as a typical Sunday sort of day, you know, the kind of day where you hit the snooze button oh, about six times for ten minute snoozers. Okay, so I didn’t make it to an early morning gym meeting, church meeting, or even an early morning coffee klatch sort of meeting. Instead, I simply lay back in bed and caught up with a private moment of Sunday Morning Gratitude.
I felt grateful for the early morning warmth between the sheets and the quiet whispers of a town not quite awake to the challenges of the day. Listening for the sound of a car engine roaring to life, ready to join the other big engines on the road to wherever, I was pleasantly rewarded instead with Sunday Morning Quiet.
I kept listening and all I heard was the sound of nature coming to life. I heard the sound of birds, all in a nest, chirping together. Those chirpy little birds, breaking the quiet of the morning, served to remind me of a book I used to, as a child, read to my younger brothers – - ”Are You My Mother?” It was one of the books in the Dr. Suess “Beginning to Read,” series. Remember the book? Still popular today, it has a turquoise green cover with a bird standing on top of a lounging dog.
image courtesy of ShannonsBookNook.com
Taking the memory back to when I was about six or seven, I spent a moment just remembering the feeling of being a little girl, slowly turning the page for dramatic effect, to a picture of the little bird asking a big yellow construction crane the most important question in the world, “Are you my mother?” You might remember the crane’s response, “Snort.” Highlight of the book, that one word, “Snort!” It’s funny how such simple little memories will bring on a smile of gratitude. I thought back to how my eagerness to get those Dr. Suess books in the mail brought on a lifelong love of reading and my own desire to someday be a mom, a mother, and a parent.
If asked, I always knew that I wanted to be a mother. Even at an early age, I knew that I would someday have children and I just wanted to be a mom. I just never knew why I knew, or how I knew. This morning those questions, without even being asked, were answered.
This morning I remembered what it felt like when I was six and seven to hold the tiny little brothers in my arms and to care for them as they struggled to crawl, then to walk and run. I remembered the joy of reading book after book to them in a great big arm chair that held us all in place as we pored over one colorful picture book after another. My own mother, busy with the needs of five growing children, was always appreciative of having a mother’s assistant in the form of a six year old reader, hugger, and diaper changer.
The sound of a nest full of chirping birds brought forward a forgotten memory and a moment of gratitude. I climbed out of bed, greeted the day with a smile, and called my son.
Namaste.
