I feel so keenly aware of the fact that my babies are growing up.
And that life is just spinning.
I promised myself back when I was 9 years old and resented the yearly "first day of school picture" that I would never do it to my kids. So I just get one of her walking off.
Look at that big girlie.
I love her confident step.
Her head held high.
Her swinging arms.
Her fierce independence.
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| (As much as she may have liked it - she seriously would have - she did not go to school without a shirt on. It just looks that way.) |
I'm reading Anne Lamott's book Operating Instructions.
As you know, I don't read books front to back, but a page here and a page there until I've read them all. And I don't re-read books or re-watch movies or just generally do anything twice (except make oaties). But I'm going cover to cover and rereading this one. Its an account of Lamott's son's first year and, as always, her writing is amazing. I'm going to be on the library's shitlist for a year b/c I'm folding down the pages that speak to me. (Sometime I'll jump on my soapbox and write a blogpost about how books are meant to be consumed!)
She says that it helps beyond words to take yourself through each day "as you would your most beloved mental patient relative, with great humor and lots of small treats".
Its my new Mamahood Motto.
I have adopted another from her too...
She keeps a little box by her bed into which she puts notes to God. She writes down her worry and then awaits her next operating instructions. I've adopted the practice - although just figuratively, not literally - and am in awe of the way that God truly does provide operating instructions in God's own time. Whether its about how to proceed through an evening that seems to be going down the toilet or which job to take or how to handle a broken friendship or whether or not to call the doctor for my son's fever...
When I fold it up and give it to God and just breathe in it for a bit, what to do next becomes clear in time. I know that to many, that's not a revelation.
But to me, lately, it is.
