We are the lucky ones!
Image by Oli Studholme
We wake up to cherub cheeks and pudgy arms that wrap themselves around our necks.
We wake to singing voices and giggles from a shared bedroom, and the flutter of covers being kicked off.
We wake to enough food to eat, and a morning beverage of choice (hot tea, black coffee, fruity juice, hot chocolate, cold water from a tap).
An adventure in a book waits to be read to eager and attentive (if occasionally distracted) short people.
Legos and markers, blocks and plastic animals litter our floors without regard for soft bare feet, but remind us of the big imaginations housed in the “looks like me” bodies of our kidlets.
A surprise conversation is just ahead—one of our little ones will say the fabulous invented grammar term of the day, one of the slightly bigger ones will laugh at a cliché we had forgotten was funny, one of the older ones will share a fear we didn’t know hid behind the tough careful eyes.
Some time today someone will learn some new thing that changes everything in a moment, for a moment or for good!
We get to hug our students, rub their shoulders, cuddle them on the couch, and ask for butterfly kisses in return. No worries, no misunderstanding—just love!
We wake to the newness of today, ready to greet it with an openness to being surprised. Even if the books are the same, and the refrigerator is a little depleted, and the floors are sticky—who knows what might happen?
We don’t yet know which of today’s activities will be logged in the conscious memory bank, returned to in a week or month or 15 years from now! We don’t know which will be forgotten yet will form a foundation of family, strength, hope, and warmth that take us through a lifetime.
We are the lucky ones.
We live each day, conscious that our choices shape the next generation indelibly, and our legacy lives in Pampers and footie pj’s, and mismatched socks, and swingy skirts from thrift stores, and lacrosse gear. These little people craving information as food and food as family and family as love and security are with us for a short 18 years and we get to see it all unfold, right before our eyes…
Hide and seek! Go find it.
Cross-posted on facebook.
