Moonful Moments And…

When walking through the rain on a spring-felt morning in still winter a smile is inevitable. What a welcome wash of promise, whispers of budding life around the next curve. It’s been a long short month. Walks in moonlight with my sons and long, long talks in the talking car (my car is the talking car) with my daughter, all these moments sweet cram their wealth in with the ongoing projects, demands, plans, obstructions and creations.

Life is…precious, good, wet, dusty, rearranging, revamping, renewing…challenging. And I still feel the moon from the walk in boylight and the joy of feeling life heal places deep. Two gently growing people grace my life with this enormous revelation of the sweetness of boyness, everything from crazy arm farts to kisses on the cheeks and backrubs for their mom but not before pounding out a rhythm one more time with the feet on the hardwood floor and not without pulling out a violin or viola to grace the house with something yearning. Without these wonderful wildish creatures, I’d not have the hours of making clay, spreading clay and watching the 9-headed mythological wonder emerge…

What struck me the most after 9 hours in the kitchen cooking up hydra? These guys love team, love creating, love feeling like they’ve contributed. And they LOVE to see what gooey masses can become.

When you grow up with all girls…there’s much to learn. And unlearn. The unlearning is the best…

And then there’s this daughter-woman who speaks into my life in ways no one has before, washing past the walls constructed in defense, crumbling bits of “ruth” into a mass of flowing acceptance. “Mom, you have GOT to stop…” The list is long but the ruthlessness (the best kind) of her truthful observations births me. It turns out that the insecurities my closest friends observe are howling out their worst for my supportive truth-speaking daughter. “You are so hard on yourself…you don’t let me say anything good about you because I’m your daughter…you assume…and you will NOT listen when I try to…and would you please…” How many moms get the chance to watch their daughters grow from their own place of unique perspective and say “I know you Mom, more than you realize, and what I see…”? It’s a stretching beautiful time. It magnifies and deepens what we’re here for in these roles. As parents, we’re meant to facilitate the emergence of a whole person who happens to be our offspring. That apparently includes allowing their facilitation of our continued emergence into wholeness. I get to see whether or not my ideas about roles are actually viable, liveable. If you are mom, do you lose your authority, your place of leadership when the teen-woman pounds the truth lovingly in your face? No, but you give room for the truth that we’re all here to learn from each other and we don’t lose face when the kids know better. Sometimes they know better because we lose perspective by virtue of the role itself, growing a bit brittle and resistant in the hopes to protect them from our own humanity. It doesn’t work. There’s such reward in experiencing it all, growing in new ways while I listen to her umpteenth lovely, dance with  Für Elise on the guitar, and watch her art, her articulation and her heart for love grow.

This is my world and. And so much else. I find it difficult to write lately due to the fullness, the overwhelming goodness of it all. The shift going on in my soul requires times of brewing silence. And so it has been lately. Something new is on the horizon. It may not manifest itself in ways others will recognize but there’s a spring rain falling on winter’s earth here washing away debris, wooing the soul for another dance with life…