My eyes are so heavy, and I am bone-tired. I’m not even certain why I’m writing except to know that this span of days happened. Otherwise it’s just a blur. This is always my way of pushing the pause button. Stop. Slow down. Inhale, exhale. Write.
This week was a full plate for me at work – classes in gear, new text for my composition class, tutor training in the writing center, more meetings than I can make time for. Then there was the usuals of ballet class and preschool drop-off, school bus stop and soccer practice. We ate fast food tonight. Rolled in the driveway at 8:05 pm after soccer practice, brown bags in hand. Bathtime to wash away the day’s grit and settled in bed by 9.
Rinse, repeat. Rinse, repeat. Rinse, repeat.
I’m looking forward to slow coffee and waffles tomorrow morning as my chance to breathe for a minute. Lately I’m relying on the tiniest minutes of empty space to provide me fuel for the rest of it.
Sunday night, just before dinner, we planted our kale and cauliflower in the little Growboxes I have on my patio. I never feel as close to my grandmother as when my hands are in the dirt. The smell of it and the feel of it and the ways she taught me to care for something small and have patience for it to grow.
I always felt loved by her when I was a child, nothing but love all the time. But as I see what it’s like on this side of motherhood, I see that love doesn’t always feel like love when you’re in it. It feels like loads of laundry and packing lunches in a dimly lit kitchen when everyone else is fast asleep. It looks like lots of tending and lots of patience, and I just hope they feel it like I did and don’t see the work and exhaustion yet.
I’m still ever-so-slowly making my way through Krista Tippet’s Becoming Wise. And she has a chapter on love. She explains, “Love is the superstar of virtues, and the most watered down word in the English language. I love this weather. I love your dress. And what we’ve done with the word, we’ve done with this thing — this possibility, this essential bond, this act. … We’ve fetishized it into romance, when it’s true measure is a quality of sustained, practical care. We’ve lived it as a feeling, when it is a way of being.”
Practical care isn’t all that exciting. Being instead of feeling isn’t always enthralling and worth writing about. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned about love in this season of my life it’s that it’s not about elaborate gestures or what you say or swear. Instead it lives and thrives in those practical tasks of care and attention.
I hang on to those little moments of feeling as best I can though. Bedtime hugs, hand squeezes, and even sunlight on my shoulders with my hands in the dirt — a gesture from the other side to say I see you, I hear you, you’re doing it right.
Mama the Reader 