Some days Daddy is gone and no one naps and the dog doesn’t get enough walks and no one has enough patience. You know the days. The ones where you bite your tongue every other word and think, “Just til bedtime. I just have to make it til bedtime.” This baby phase is hard for me. I don’t like being needed all the time and touched all the time and cried at all the time. On those days, when the daily duties are heavy, we keep busy, because cooped up feelings lead to frustrated words and bored boys lead to boys that scream and break things just for something to do. (Maybe boredom leads to that in all of us, if we’re honest.)
Some say beauty comes by appreciating every moment, but often that doesn’t do any justice to the way life really is. Sometimes things aren’t beautiful and unblemished with a clean white background. Some days there are days that go by in minutes and heavy things are plopped in your lap that weren’t there the day before. Work problems, car problems, or a suddenly sick child. (We had two of three today.)
So today I plopped a crying Eliot into the stroller and when we couldn’t find the dog leash we made do with one of my belts. It turns out that in a pinch, a belt actually works beautifully for a leash. (Life hack!)
We found a place a few months ago that is narrow and moss covered and goes over a very dirty little canal, but sometimes the ducks come there anyway. And so do we. At the top of the hill there is a school, so in the mornings the kids stream over the water and up the dirty steps and through the gate. But after school hours it is closed and locked, and no one but us comes here. These days, long narrow places with only one exit are my friend. So much to see with minimal chance of escape.
This afternoon the sun hit everything just right, clear but hot, and Lincoln decided this was the day he would start taking ownership of Mina. Maybe the belt seemed easier than the leash, or maybe it was the new hair cut reminding him as well as me that he is almost 3, and getting older. But for the first time, he started leading her around, back and forth, talking to her, telling her not to eat the old food someone had thrown out over the fence. (Our scavenger dog, man. It’s like I never feed her.)
But sometimes, the ducks do come to a dirty canal, and sometimes, the sun creates the sharp, dark shadows, even though that means it’s hot.
And beauty? Sometimes the beauty comes in the getting through. In the breathing when they both start crying at the same time for the 23rd time that day. In the explaining for the 7th time that no, we do not lick the bridge railing, and marveling at the fact that this information is surprising every time you say it.
And consider that this is maybe what growing is, a part of it at least; getting through these hard phases to something better ahead. To a time when they will not trip on the same step every time, to when you do not have to live outside to keep you all sane, to a time when you will not feel safest in a 5 foot by 30 foot area surrounded by walls and railings.
There must be beauty in this getting through. Because progress is being made, just because you are here, in the midst of it. It has to be. Your brain sorts itself out little by little, you grow a little more mature, your little children grow a little older.
Someday the world will open up again. But for now, we’re getting through.
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