dear santa,

you and i have a long and significant history that began when my eight-year-old self questioned the existence of you and god in one fell swoop. so i hope that you will not get your velveteen knickers in a wad over the fact that i have chosen you to be on the receiving end of my latest musings.

first, i should say that all i want for christmas is for my life to slow down. i’m not talking about the way that time creeps sluggishly under the weight of anxiety when sick kids are (again!) home from school.

sick bird

i’m talking about the reinstatement of routines that had their own happy, measured rhythm. i never thought i would ask for something like this, but i just want to wash and fold all of the family’s laundry on mondays while the kids eat popcorn on towels in our bedroom and watch back-to-back episodes of the british cartoon kipper the dog. also, i would love for there to be two (TWO!) nights in a row when the adult residents of our house are free from all recreational, church, work, and civic commitments and can resume the deep spiritual practice of falling asleep while watching the latest season of top chef.

p.s. if this slower-paced life could still include the necessary d.i.y. renovations to our newly purchased mountain house that would be swell.

den before and after

"the mermaid room" becomes "the god's eye room"

i am willing to give up running the half marathon this saturday, creating and distributing our annual christmas cd, and, as evidenced by my behavior in the days preceding and following thanksgiving, major components of my self-hygiene routine.

what do you say, big guy?

second, my children are under the impression that they can ask you for items on their lists without notifying me that they are doing so. goodness knows, at ages five and almost-three, the kids are way too young to start questioning your existence (and god’s), but their unwavering belief in you is making my job difficult. would you mind forwarding me all texts, emails, letters, and telegrams that come your way from our house? thanks. lylas (love you like a sis).

third, and this is a two-parter, when you come bounding down our chimney, would you mind cleaning it out at the same time? ’tis the season. also, how do you feel about entering our home via an UNDECORATED hearth? just think of it as a few less strands of tinsel that ms. clause will have to extract from your beard.

to show my appreciation for all that you do during this busy time of year, i’m going to leave you a little something special to go along with the usual christmas cookies.

peace out,

mary allison

for four years and four months, my world has constantly expanded.

motherhood has brought new and interesting people into my life. the day we brought the monkey home from the hospital, i became a member of a diverse group of fellow moms who share something so basic that there is potential for meaningful conversation even in the checkout line at target.

motherhood has broadened my realm of experiences. i’m not just a woman in my thirties. i’m a little boy in the terrible twos. i’m eating ice-cream for the first time. i am wrapping my four-year-old mind around the concept of death. i’m testing limits, drawing on walls, and climbing on counter tops. i am getting my first bicycle with training wheels for christmas.

on the other hand, for four years and four months, my world has constantly contracted.

motherhood has zapped my energy supply. never before have i had the level of connection with friends that i do now. the paradox is that i no longer have the get-up-and-go to make these connections happen regularly. 

motherhood has narrowed my realm of experiences. there are mind-blowing heights and depths in my every day. but most of these events take place within the four walls of my home.

the female body is not the only part that expands and contracts in the process of ushering in and supporting new life. long after the pregnancy is over there is a new largess and a new kind of narrowing with which to contend. the simultaneous awe and discomfort of pregnancy take up residence in the mind for how long? four years and four months? eighteen years? from now on?

you never know when a piece of obscure information will turn out to be useful.

take the paragraph in my human development textbook on the subject of “the birds and the bees” chat with children, for example. when i read it six years ago, i could not have predicted that the time would come when this paragraph would be the tiny little rope of rescue that would save me from (yet another) dark abyss of parental cluelessness. how was i to know then that the words, “do not offer more information than your child is requesting” would emerge from the depths of my memory at just the right moment, the moment when the following comedy of errors ensued?

monkey: “mom, how do babies come out of their mommies’ bellies?”

mary allison: “they come out of the vagina, monkey.”

monkey: “mommy, what’s a vagina?”

mary allison: “you know how you have a penis? well girls don’t have penises. we have vaginas instead.”

monkey: “you mean that little hole?”

mary allison: “yep. that little hole.”

monkey: “where the poop comes out?”

mary allison: “nope. a different little hole.”

monkey: [after a ten minute silence] “so… that big old baby comes out of that little bitty hole??”

mary allison: “yep.”

monkey: [shaking his head] “well that’s not good AT ALL!”

mary allison; “tell me about it.”

hilarious that a four year old is able to recognize when the laws of physics are not working in one’s favor.

i suppose the monkey will store these fascinating new insights into the recesses of his memory, and i suppose they too will surface at just the right moment. after all, you never know when a piece of obscure information will turn out to be useful.

but lord help us if my four-year-old has any use for any of this information any time soon!

to mark the season of advent and the accompanying waiting and yearning for new life in all of its various forms, i’m posting a sermon i preached this time last year at shady grove church. it’s the most honest and vulnerable sermon i’ve ever preached, and i’m including it in the MakeShift revolution because it is equally influenced by my ministry and my motherhood. the texts of the day were jeremiah 33:14-16 and luke 21:25-36. interspersed throughout the text are some block prints i did in 2007 for the advent bulletin covers atidlewild church.

*     *     *

The “baby watch” had begun. The future grandparents called every 12 hours or so to ask about signs of labor. The great-aunt was on standby, ready to babysit the two-year-old on a moment’s notice. The nursery had been complete for a good month, the baby clothes had been washed, folded, and put away, the name had been selected, and the birthing plan had been mapped out. The new car seat was secure in the car. The two-year-old endured periodic explanations about what was about to happen, even though he really just wanted to play with his play dough in peace. And everywhere she went, that is, everywhere I went, I was a walking, waddling, symbol of Advent, pregnant, like Mary, during the days leading up to last Christmas. 

Meanwhile, the season of Advent set the stage with its rich stories. The prophets were prophesying the coming of a new king. John the Baptist was urging his congregation, the brood of vipers, to repent. Mary and Joseph saddled up a pack animal and went to be registered. The young adult Jesus was telling his disciples, and us, to look for the signs of the second coming. The weeks unfurled to the sights of Christmas lights, and the sounds of TV ads meant to herald, or perhaps beg for, salvation for our broken economy. There were the usual to-do lists and the painfully unusual absences left by death and empty nests. I don’t need to tell you what the holidays are like. We all know that strange hybrid of hope and impatience, excitement and desperation that comes when we are expecting God to break into our midst. But for me, last year, it really did all come down to the baby. My baby, who threatened all winter to make an early arrival and beat the baby Jesus to the punch.

I spent some time last year thinking that being very pregnant during Advent gave me a special entry point into this season of preparation and waiting. This brought an added measure of importance to the usual third-trimester symptoms: shortness of breath, night-waking, paranoia about missing the signs of imminent birth, mistaking my own impatience for signs of imminent birth, indigestion, emotional highs and lows, and attempts to conform this miracle to my schedule by eating spicy food, standing on my head, walking laps around the mall, etcetera.

But then I remembered that all of my Advents before had been marked by the same symptoms. Perhaps you suffer from some of these inflictions too: shortness of breath, night-waking, paranoia about missing the signs of imminent birth, mistaking your own impatience for signs of imminent birth, indigestion, emotional highs and lows, and attempts to conform this miracle to your schedule. After all, Advent’s vulnerable waiting wrapped up in the frenzy of pomp and circumstance transforms us all, every year, into people who are expecting, whether we’ve ever been pregnant or not.

But it was not just my pregnancy that connected me so intimately to the Advent story last year. It was another common thread that weaves through the prophecies and the gospels, through my story, and perhaps yours too. I was lured into believing that I knew what to expect when I was expecting.

The people of the houses of Israel and Judah are certain that the coming king will be a ruler, like the rulers of their day. Jeremiah TELLS them that the coming king will establish justice and righteousness in the land, and they just assume that this justice and righteousness will happen in the usual way – by killing off their enemies. They are lured into believing that they know what to expect when they are expecting.

The people who crowd around Jesus in the gospel of Luke, and later many Christians of our time are certain that the second coming of our king will be signaled by the sun, moon, and stars; distress among the nations; and the roaring of the sea and the waves. Jesus TELLS them and us that the Son of Man is coming on a cloud, and from then on our generation of followers has just assumed that this event can be quantified, predicted, screen lit, packaged, and sold. We, that is many Christians of our day and time, are lured into believing that we know what to expect when we are expecting.

The ultrasound tech told my husband and me that our baby was to be a boy. And because we already had one of those — a precious, curly-headed, spirited wonder –  we just assumed that the baby growing in my womb would be another precious, curly-headed, spirited wonder. We were lured into believing that we knew what to expect when we were expecting.

But the people of the houses of Israel and Judah did not get what they were expecting. Their king was a baby, and though he eventually did work for justice and righteousness, he didn’t follow the military model. Instead, he preached about forgiveness and nonviolence

The people who crowd around Jesus in Luke and even now don’t always get what we are expecting either. There are glimmers of the second coming all the time but the cataclysmic event that hits it big in the box office does not seem imminent, nor does longing for it heal the longing in our souls

And a test in the sixteenth week of my pregnancy revealed that my expectations were not accurate either. My little boy had an elevated risk for downs syndrome. Downs or no downs, he could still be a precious, curly-headed, spirited wonder, but I could no longer cling to the silly notion that my second son would be just like my first.

Twice, I endured procedures designed to tell me for sure whether or not my son had Downs. Twice these procedures failed. I was left with no choice but to move through the season in a sort of embodied uncertainty. I had no idea what to expect while I was expecting, and I realized then that nobody else REALLY does either.

Well, this was an entirely different kind of waiting than I had signed up for. The place in my heart that I was preparing for another precious, curly-headed, spirited wonder slowly died, and in its place grew a reluctant, and eventually exuberant openness to this baby, who would change my life forever. Advent comes each year with its traditions and stories, associations, and plans. We have learned to prepare our hearts for these things, so comforting with their certainty. But only the uncertainty, only the wild prospect of an unpredictable savior, only this different kind of reluctant and eventually exuberant waiting can really open us up to the fullness of new life that is promised. Sometimes our expectations keep us from the radically receptive kind of expecting to which we are called.

My son, [the bird], was born on January 17^th of this year, and he does not have Downs Syndrome. But in my opinion, the real victory in this story lies elsewhere. From the moment the doctor handed me my baby, fresh from the womb, I felt nothing but unconditional love. The question about Downs that had ruled so much of my pregnancy had no relevance at all in the face of this love, so powerful, this baby, so divine. Miraculously, I had made room for him, and all that he is, and all that he will become.

This is how my little [bird] taught me what Advent is all about before he was even 5 minutes old. It’s about opening our hearts to a God who is never limited by our expectations. It’s about embracing uncertainty. It’s about casting aside all of those things that have no relevance at all in the face of love and divinity. But most of all, it’s about making room for the baby, born in the city of David, and all that he is, and all that he will become.

AMEN.

name: Andi Williams  

age: 44

current city: Brevard, NC (outside of Asheville) 

living situation: Living with my husband and me in our home are two kids: Boy Child (14) and Girl Child (13). We have two rescue mutt/labs from Memphis and the world’s oldest guinea pig, Wilbur.

Boy Child is brilliant, big and strong, older than he should be, and wants to live off the grid. He cannot put his big stinky shoes away, plays three types of guitar, and will ask for Healing Touch when he is hurt. He has a bear skin on his bed from a bear he shot and is tremendously proud when the game he shot is on the supper table. We have discussions on the best way to take out zombies. He swears I could learn to use a shotgun. I prefer to run over them or use a bat or golf club. 

Girl Child is brilliant in her own way, curvy and girly, will always be my little girl but has an old soul. She talks to angels and has moments of profound wisdom. I expect to write a book one day about her and with her. She is living proof that the things that come out of teenagers mouths are genetically and developmentally encoded. She loves us best one minute, then turns around the next and says, “Watch me” in a talk to the hand sort of way. This is usually in reference to more time watching PBS. 

My husband is lovely, wonderful, and (as most) could be the topic of a whole nutha blog. 

The dogs are middle-aged and lovely, except for the increased squirrel patrolling that is occurring this fall. Wilbur should be dead by all accounts, but continues to show no signs of stopping. 

occupation: I am the Coordinator of Integrative Healthcare at Mission Hospital, Asheville. I have a special interest in Whole Person Theory and Healing Touch and have completed certifications in these areas. Maintaining a balanced life between work and home is not always easy with two teenagers (one with significant special needs). 

how do you structure your time and space? My space has become showroom tidy. Our house has been on the market since April, so a lot of my “stuff” is in boxes. Turns out that we didn’t need so much after all, so we have made many trips to Goodwill and had a garage sale. I would like to say I’m very zen with it, but honestly, I don’t like living this tidily. I miss my packed up art studio and the scatter of books, magazines, and art projects. My desk at the office compensates for this.

I have two email accounts (work and home) and two calendars (work on the hospital computer system, home on the fridge). I commute 45 minutes two times a day with our high school freshman to Asheville, cook once a week for the whole week, and schedule “girl days” with our special girl. I work out while Boy Child is at wrestling practice, then we commute back home, at which point I can hear my husband snoring in the bed. We are ready to move to Asheville if someone would buy our house. 

using the metaphor of seasons to describe the phases of women’s lives,

-what are the particular challenges and highlights of your current season? Let’s be literal here. This is the season of SUMMER for me. I am hot often (hot flashes, hot and bothered, hot to trot… you name it). I am often uncomfortable in a new job, new transitions, and new thought processes. I feel new and green and in full bloom in a life role I didn’t really want, but (ha) here I am anyway and stuck to the hot seat.

The highlights of this hot season are learning new skill sets professionally as I switch from being a very task-oriented critical care/resource nurse to being a very holistic nurse/educator/organizer/writer. I am published (as of a few weeks ago) in a national nursing magazine and will be presenting in the spring at a national nursing conference. I’m freaking out (in a very holistic, zen, present sort of way). Breathe….. 

-what season(s) preceded this one? Spring preceded our current season. The kids were young and fresh, and going to the playground was fun and the best part of the day. We were young marrieds then and not worried about much. I was a student, learning and growing and training. There was so much new growth.

-what season(s) might your future hold? Summer is going to last a while.  

favorite family activities: Girl Child loves to eat out. Boy Child goes along good-naturedly for the most part. The oldest has out grown us both in size and strength and engages in risky behaviors that we are no longer capable of or never dreamed of like rock climbing, wrestling, and jiujutsu. The youngest abhors Mother Nature and would prefer to spend her day shopping, dancing, and dressing up. Both fit their gender stereotypes to the extreme. Therefore, we do a lot of divide and conquer type activities. Boys are backpacking and camping this weekend while girls are shopping and eating. We do switch off. Dad can seriously boogie to Abba and Mom can hike a good eight to nine miles without complaining (whining starts at mile ten). We all also like music (got to meet Ricky Skaggs back stage this summer!) and have family music afternoons with the boys on guitar and girls on vocals (loud, not good).

favorite solo activities: painting, pen and ink, yoga, reading trashy novels

source(s) of inspiration: Anne Lamott’s books, my parents, Janet Menken – the founder of Healing Touch, Lucia Thornton, Brene Brown

best MakeShift moment: For Boy Child’s fourth birthday party, the fire department brought the big truck by the house for an hour and let the kids climb and look and visit. I sent them back to the fire station with brunch. We used to frequent the stations every three to four weeks to look at the trucks and visit with the crews. It was cheap fun and civic involvement (we took cookies). Now my kid wants to be a fire fighter (smoke jumper to be exact). Be careful what you makeshift.

Another day I took both kids out on the front porch and let them finger-paint the entire front glass windows and door with cool whip, chocolate pudding and shaving cream. We then hosed the porch and them off. I miss those days. They were fun! Now i can torture teenagers with threats of putting near-naked chocolate-pudding-covered-toddler pictures on facebook. These days are fun too!

  [if you know someone who would make a good “mothers of invention” feature, check out the nomination process and questionnaire located on the sidebar to your right.]

first grade, for me, was when the curriculum ceased to be play-based. the active life of preschool and kindergarten, with all of its hiding and seeking and cooking and dancing, became fodder for my daydreams as i plugged away at my little wooden first grade desk at what was unabashedly called “seatwork.” i resisted this stationary kind of learning so much that i almost failed the first grade, but in the face of at least eleven more years of school, i learned to expand my knowledge within the confines of the system. unknowingly, i separated the parts of me that were once beautifully integrated in childhood: mental and physical exercise. there were spelling tests and there was recess. there was long division, and there was sports practice. there was contemporary theology and there was jogging. as i was being created into a contributing member of society, there was evening, and there was morning for approximately 4,140 days.

as i was riding my bicycle on the greenline yesterday with the bird in tow, i lapsed into the guilty reflection that is common to upper middle class mothers. i calculated how many days i have spent formally acquiring knowledge in educational settings, and i came up with the above number. then i commenced to worry that “my brain is turning to mush.” i thought of my diplomas that are not framed in an office but are still tucked away in their little black folders between photo albums of my kids’ first years and behind a colorful butcher paper masterpiece that the monkey created at school. i thought of the staggering amount of guilt that is experienced as women like me, who have spent the majority of our lives doing “seatwork,” are plunged into the unfamiliar world of mothering, where equations and essays are irrelevant. i started plotting my next vocational move once the kids are in school, work that would justify my masters degree and present a reason to frame those diplomas. and then i remembered another stark contrast between life in educational systems and life as a mostly stay-at-home-mom: the former is future-oriented by design. the latter can only be fully embraced by living in the present.

i went on like this for an hour — enough time for the bird and me to ride to shelby farms and back into town. i reflected on the way that my life now involves so much physical activity — schlepping kids, groceries, and laundry, pushing the steam mop, averting disasters, rushing to disentangle the climbing bird from all manor of hanging garage tools. the seatwork smarty pants in me unleashed more judgement. “what a waste,” she said.

and then, miraculously, i remembered who i was in the first place, before the confines of first grade hit, before i spent 4,140 days compartmentalizing mental and physical excercise. i am someone who loves a play-based curriculum and an integrated life. and that is precisely what i’ve got right now.

so as the bird and i finished up our bike ride and went on to schlepp the week’s groceries, i laid the guilt to rest. perhaps mothering young children is a chance to return to a more natural state of being, a time to collect all of the scattered parts of me and put them back together.

at the end of august,a complex idea was conceived. the monkey stated his halloween intentions in great detail, and a committee (comprised myself and the monkey) was formed to carry out the tasks at hand. feather boa… check. tie dyed union suit… check. homemade mask… check. facepaint… check. the result was one very happy “rainbow kitty cat,” and two parents who fell asleep last night knowing that we did the right thing by letting the monkey be the monkey.

we did, however, impose our own halloween ideations on the bird, who rocked the neighborhood as elvis (the rock star, not the webkinz mountain goat).

next year, the boys probably won’t even need costumes. they’ll just smile and reveal their rotted out teeth — a consequense of this halloween’s tootsie rolls and smarties. perhaps i should dress as a wicked dental hygienist. time to form a committee.

“i have such a good life, i want to appreciate it more — and live up to it better” (13).

this is gretchen rubin’s explanation for why she has written the happiness project, an account of her year-long experiment to increase her appreciation for life. and this is also my explanation for why i wanted to read her book. rubin takes seriously current research that purports that 50 percent of one’s level of happiness is genetic, 10 to 20 percent is tied to life circumstances, and the “remainder is a product of how a person thinks and acts” (6).

after a period of introspection about what sorts of factors affect her personal level of happiness, rubin comes up with 12 goals and works on one each month. included in the happiness project are things like being mindful and paying attention to life’s details, reading more, staying in touch with friends, and lightening up her parenting approach. the idea is that readers will come up with their own particular sets of goals and carry out their own experiments in happiness. but there does seem to be one universal cornerstone of happiness, valued so highly by rubin that she makes it her goal for january. in a word, this factor is…

rubin sites research that suggests that “along with tight work deadlines, a bad night’s sleep [is] one of the top two factors that upset people’s daily moods” (19). furthermore, “getting one extra hour of sleep each night would do more for a person’s daily happiness than getting a $60,000 raise” (19).

the critical reading glasses i learned to don in college and grad school make me want to question these assertions. but the parent in me knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the importance of sleep could never be overstated. sleep is everything. without it, chasing a toddler feels like running against the wind with a parachute on your back.* with sleep, it’s possible to host a play date, cook dinner, deal with a sick dog, talk to one’s boss on the phone, and smile — all at the same time.

i’m not sure whether or not i’ll conduct my own happiness project. what i do know is that i am completely sold on the benefits of a sleep project. in fact, i’ve already started. last night i got ten uninterrupted hours of sleep. that’s right, TEN HOURS! but i’m on vacation, and my parents are keeping my kids. the real test will come on wednesday, when i return home to my kiddos and routine. will i go to bed earlier or succumb to the mind-numbing television that i dearly love?

oh, and if you’ve just put your kids to bed and you are up too late reading blogs, go to bed! when you wake up, you’ll feel like $60,000 dollars.

[source info for this post can be found on the bibliography page located on the sidebar to your right.]

*as i tried to think of metaphors that fully describe the difficulty of feeling sleep-deprived while chasing a toddler, all i could think of were other things pertaining to parenting a toddler. as it turns out, being sleepy while chasing a toddler is like pushing a stroller up hill, snagging a toddler from the stairs 50 times a day, looming over a toddler in the baby pool, cleaning up after a toddler eats yogurt, et cetera. in short, chasing a toddler on four hours of sleep is like, well, CHASING A TODDLER ON FOUR HOURS OF SLEEP!

lately, i’ve been reading geneen roth’s women, food, and god, a book i passed over the first four times it called out to me from the best-seller rack at target. the book is a spiritual approach to disordered relationships with food, exercise, and the body, disordered relationships that used to be landmarks in my own internal terrain. in light of new found and much appreciated health in these areas, i was hesitant to read about what women do to mask, override, indulge, project, and protect our hungers. it’s better just to celebrate that the real struggle is behind me, i thought. it’s better not ask too many questions.

roth describes addictions to food, thinness, exercise, et cetera as coping mechanisms for more existential struggles and longings. in order to avoid “trusting our less tangible hungers (for rest, contact, meaning),” which are often surprising “doorways into a blazing inner universe,” women often use food, rigid discipline, dieting, and the like to transform our existential angst into something more manageable (14, 15). and there are secondary gains that come when we buy into the widespread weight loss industry. this industry has given women a language to speak about our shortcomings. it has given us the illusion that we can control our fates. it has given us company in our loneliness. but as roth points out, it also traps us in the cycle of losing and gaining the same 18 pounds, 30 different times, over a lifespan of about 80 years.

in my reading of women, food, and god, i have recognized myself in what roth describes as “creating a secondary problem when the original problem becomes too uncomfortable” (52). it has occurred to me that a good bit of the energy i used to exert over body image issues is currently channelled into another common secondary problem: finding that ever-elusive balance between love and work. perhaps the real struggle is not behind me after all. perhaps it has merely changed forms.

though i swore off dieting many years ago, i am enjoying similar secondary gains in the quest for balance. once again, i have a language for articulating my grief, a notion that i can control my fate by making the right choices, and a community of other women who are trying along with me to restore equilibrium to our lives. and it strikes me that this quest might also trap me in a similar cycle of losing and gaining my balance 30 plus times for a lifespan of about 80 years (or at least until my children are launched).

i’m now asking myself what deeper hungers are masked by the ever-popular quest for balance. have i internalized systemic ills and personalized the great imbalances around me? are my feverish engagements with the working world merely escape attempts from a basic loneliness that could be a “doorway to a blazing universe?” is my decision to spend most of my time at home a way of taking myself out of a game i fear i’d lose?

i don’t know the answers to these questions but i think they are worth pondering. it seems entirely possible that fullness is achieved by embracing our hungers.

[source for this post is located on the bibliography page in the sidebar to your right.]

for the longest time, i resisted getting a tattoo. there was a brief stint in college when i constantly doodled dogwood blossoms and imagined one artfully inked on my ankel or just below the hairline on the back of my neck. but like all symbols that have illumined my path, after its debut as The Center of Unspoken Meaning in my life, the dogwood blossom returned to work at her day job as a bit of earthly matter charged to participate in an ordinary sort of beauty. and i moved on to the sanskrit word for OM, or the mayan cross, or something equally evocative and deep.

image from dianeplus5.blogspot.com

i saw the movie eat, pray, love last week, which reminded me of one of my favorite lines in the book by elizabeth gilbert. in the book, liz is lamenting to her sister that she is feeling reluctant about starting a family. she is trying to discern whether to heed or disregard this ambivalence when her sister says,

“having a baby is like getting a tattoo… ON YOUR FACE. you really need to be certain it’s what you want before you commit.”

it’s true. having a baby is an immediate, noticeable, and permanent identity change. i got my first tattoo in the summer of 2006, at which point i traded things like free time and personal space for an unshakable sense of love and awe and sleep deprivation. my second tattoo came in the winter of 2009, which is when i traded the last vestiges of order in my life for complete chaos, the last shard of my remaining vanity for a brown magic marker and a little road trip entertainment (see above), and my already-full-heart for an impossibly deeper sort of love. inasmuch as there is divinity in everything and everyone (and i believe there is) my children really are the reorienting, Centers of Unspoken Meaning in my life. i don’t want to completely lose my identity in them, and i still treasure the meaning found in all of the world’s symbols. but i have committed myself to shaping and being shaped by these little beings. i might as well ride with them into the depths and usher them into the heights of life. this privelege is what makes such sacrifice worth it.

but taking the parenting plunge yields yet another reward, one that i am just recently beginning to recognize. the indigo girls speak of it in their song, get out the map:

“with every lesson learned a line upon your beautiful face/we’ll amuse ourselves one day with these memories we’ll trace.”

perhaps i am also trading worry and wrinkles for the sweetest of memories… the way the monkey cannot say his R’s, the spring of their curls, the first day the bird said, “hi, mama,” when i went to get him from his crib, our july hikes through the mountains with the monkey at my side and the bird in my pack.

my face is now its own geography of commitment and lessons learned, sleepless nights and smile lines, baby fingernail scratches and sloppy toddler kisses. now i’m not much different than the dogwood blossom, a bit of earthly matter whose day job is to participate in an ordinary sort of beauty. ahh, but what an extraordinary ride this is turning out to be!