adaptation

We are in the playroom once more.  And just like yesterday, the Little Ones are pulling at baskets with dress up clothes littered around their feet.  I tie a cloak around someone’s neck, help another into a tiger costume.  But where yesterday there was magic, today is only tears.  The cloak is too long and the Middlest keeps tripping on it.  The velcro is scratching and uncomfortable.  Frustration bubbles up, and the disappointment is written on their faces.  Mine, too.  What went wrong?  The same props, the same bodies, the same imaginations.  But today, it just isn’t adding up right.  Try as we may, we are unable to recreate the joy of yesterday.

Somedays it comes easy, the glimpse of heaven, the party full of ordinary and breathtaking all at once.    The brilliance is there to be recognized.  It is easily grasped.  The feet are infused with a beat, and the whole body flows in coordinated movement.  I’m not talking about anything  glamorous, but just the small moments that seem big.  The moments when I seem to be watching myself from above, transcendent from the daily moments of living.  Yesterday in the playroom, it came easy.  There was a snowstorm, and a tiger chase, and something to do with back packs and elephants.  Oh, and smiles, theirs and mine.

I know what they are after, today in that same playroom, with those same costumes.  They are trying to do it over again, have that same feeling.  It seems like it should be that easy, right?  But just because we found our way through the back of the wardrobe into a new world yesterday doesn’t mean that it’s won’t be full of old coats with a finite end tomorrow.

Natalie Goldberg, in Writing Down the Bones says this: “When we live in a place for too long, we grow dull.  We don’t notice what is around us.”  I think that this is what happens in our magic moments, too.  That’s when those moments that were breathtaking return to just being ordinary.

In physiology there this concept called adaptation.  This is  ”the decrease in the response of sensory receptor-organs, as those of vision, touch, temperature, olfaction, audition, and pain, to changed, constantly applied, environmental conditions.”  In other words, our bodies get used to things, and we can’t sense them anymore.  Did you know that your eye makes teeny tiny movements constantly, even when you are staring at just one thing?  This makes it so that your eyes can still see things, because without those movements your eye would just get used to whatever image it is taking in.  That is adaptation.  The same thing happens when you get used to a smell, even one that was pungent and strong just moments before.  Your nose has dulled to the sharpness; it is now familiar.  I can recall a funny incident in which a friend of mine just dropped a glass of orange juice from her hand as she was watching TV.  She had been holding it so long without moving, she just forgot it was there!  Her hand couldn’t feel the glass any more.

I think that this concept of adaptation plays out in other areas of my life, too.  Too much of any thing becomes ordinary and I grow dull to the beauty.  Sometimes I need to get a different view.  It’s nice to have old favorites, but even those can wear thin and become ordinary.  I stop noticing what is around me.  It can be frustrating trying to recreate the fun of a memory.  Maybe we’re better letting a memory be just that.  Last week instead of wanting to play in the splash pool all afternoon, the Eldest pulled out his bike instead.  Still beautiful in it’s simplicity, we created different kinds of breathtaking moments.  We’ll return to the pool.  We’ll have wild adventures in the playroom with costumes and fantastical story lines.  But with the different view that we’ll get on this side of things, we’ll begin noticing the magic again.  We’ll awake from the dullness, and again say “yes” to the party.

{this moment}

{this moment} – A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. ~inspired by SouleMama

this old t-shirt

It’s 5:00am.  He’s made the coffee and brushed his teeth.  I am only sleep walking, eyes closed to tend to the Littlest before his cries rally the rest of the house.  It’s one of his favorite parts of the day, Mark tells me. I pick my head up, make bleary eye-contact, completely surprised by this admission.  (There is not much he can surprise me with anymore. Not for as long and as wide and as deep as we’ve been each other’s).  But there it is: this barely-awake, body-check-like hug of mine, in which I throw my head into his chest.  It has become routine enough.  And Mark, he knows to expect this.

My eyes blink to clear the sleep.  I’ve done my job with the Littlest, am on the worn path back to my own bed.  I tip my head, asking for more.  ”It’s so rare that you let me hold you” he says, mouth pressed up against my ear, his face lost in my tangled hair.  His arms wrap hard around my shoulders and my tired body can offer no resistance.  His words sink deep into my half awake brain, bounce around till they find a shelf to land on.  I’ll retrieve them later, acknowledge what I already know as truth.  When did it get so hard to be held? He sends me back into my dim bedroom and I slide under the cool sheets, thankful for the promise of another hour of sleep.  But his day has begun, and moments later the click of the front door sends him out into the world to do his work.

I know what he means.  At the end of the day I carry the slumbering Middlest from my bed into her own, the weight of her head pressing into my shoulder, her legs further down my body than they were the night before.  Her hair is matted with sweat to her forehead and around her ears; she makes tiny squeaks of recognition when I kiss her cheek.  This, too, if often a moment when I want to remember.  I pause to breath her in.  She let’s me hold her.  I am thankful for her surrender, aware of the trust that she offers.  But it’s easier, isn’t it – child to mother? When did it get so hard to be held?  I think I know: when I became the holder.

I still wear his old baseball shirt, the one from 1991.  He was 13.  It is gray with red lettering, number 3. We didn’t know each other then (there was a time?).  He was still small, not yet growing like some others on his team.  He didn’t know it at the time – probably wished he was bigger, taller, stronger (though none were faster) —  but he was the perfect size: that shirt was perfect for him.  Is perfect for me, now.  Had he been more of something else, this shirt would not be so right now.  It hits my shoulders in just the right spots, falls to the right length at my hips. Soft and broken in in ways that only time truly can.  I sleep in this shirt more nights than not, and often it is my uniform for summer days.  In the earlier years of our relationship, I was proud to wear his name stretched between my shoulder blades.  As the years have bled into each other, the letters have fallen off.  Our name can only be read in contrast to the rest of the aged shirt.  The shirt, though, has far fewer rips than others that have come in between.  It is made well. Somehow, I can’t help but think this says something about us.

I swear now: I will barrel my head into his chest today, fully awake, and let him hold me.  But I know that when he comes home, I will be making dinner.  Most likely someone will be crying.  He’ll hand me a stack of mail; I’ll be annoyed that he didn’t take care of the junk or sort out the bills.  He’ll look for a clean shirt when he gets out of the shower, and I’ll shout out orders to any who will listen.  The Littlest has a new tooth, the Middlest a new band-aid, and the Eldest a new word to spell.   But at the end of it all I know this: there are enough arms to go around.  Enough holding and being held to last this family’s lifetime.  I’ll trade in the clothes of the day for the little gray t-shirt with red lettering.  I’ll be his, and he’ll be mine. And we’ll hold each other for a while.

{this moment}

{this moment} – A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. ~inspired by SouleMama

the creek

I can barely see my toes inching out underneath my gaze full of baby limbs and breath.  It’s not all that different from the bulgy baby belly that I wore last year, but this summer I wear this babe, who wraps his arms around my body, on the outside.  I may not be able to see my toes exactly, but when they finally reach the creek water, I know it instantly.  It shocks my feet into feeling, and my initial reaction is to pull up, step back to the pebbles on the bank.  But I go forward again. The rubber of my flips flops cools. I brace for it.  Of course, that second time doesn’t jar so much and I pause my feet longer in the water.  The arches of my feet relax and I release my breath, allowing myself to feel the relief in this hot day.

I am at the creek that runs behind my mother’s house, the house where I grew up.  It meanders it’s way through the nature conservancy that I was lucky enough to have in my backyard.  These pebbled crusted mud banks were my playground. This chilled water was my sea; the banks on the other side my faraway lands.  Today, as so often I am inclined to do in this squelching summer heat, I gather up the Little Ones, push forward with nothing but the promise of reprieve calling us creekward.

The beauty is not lost on them.  They find wonder in all the smallness, and are awestruck with all the bigness.  The cold water is just another part of the creek’s deliciousness for them.  They dash in and out without hesitation.  I wonder when it is that I stopped being so numb to it, became timid at it’s edge.  I take note to remember this tenacity that I see in them.

Our collection grows: piles of sticks in various sizes, in differing stages of decomposition.  Rocks with smooth weightiness, pebbles with jagged edges that remind me of teeth.  Always a piece of glass or two, a jolting artifact that seems uncharacteristically out of place, reminding us of the world that seeps in on either side.  Our treasure hunt stretches out as indefinitely as our time playing here.  Has it been fifteen minutes? Or two hours?  Under this tree canopy, I am uncertain of time’s harsh constraints.

The sun streaks gloriously through the trees, leaving mottled shadow pictures on the surface of the water that dance as both the creek and the trees move in rhythm.  I hang back, witness the confident steps of independence from the Eldest. He proves his meddle and charges his sister onward into the unpredictable current away from the safety of the edge.  He tells me strongly “I’m not worried about the creek, Mama.”  In his world of anxiety and impotence, I am thankful for a place that, though not under his domain, is somewhere he can experience mastery and peace.  And it becomes my peace, too.

The Middlest, in all her gatherer glory, is chasing after a rock deep under the surface of the water.  Those shadow pictures dance and deceive, and all it is is one faulty step too many toward the edge of our sand bar. She looses her bearing and the mud sucks her down.  She is on her belly, swimming more fully than she had intended, gulping that brisk water.  She comes up wailing, though no worse for the wear, and we praise her brilliance, her pluck, her strength.  The rock is lost.  Her hiccuping tears wane, and later she again treads out to that very spot.  She wears her insecurity visibly, but with her bravery, too.

At some point I nestle myself and the Littlest onto the pebbles, and he hungrily grasps at my shirt, my neck until I can satisfy him.  It may just be the oxytocin as I pull him in to my bosom, but I feel overwhelmed by the beauty of this moment.  I listen to the chickadee whistle out “cheeseburger, cheeseburger, cheeseburger.” I follow the path of a white butterfly as it darts from this side of the creek to the other, lighting on the tall grass, stopping to rest on a branch before traveling back again.  The squeals from upstream as my mother and her dog chase the Little Ones in great big splashes turns the edges of my mouth up in their harmony. I suck in the earthy mud smell deep into my nose, down into my throat.  The warm breeze tickles at my skin, and I feel enveloped as it seeps around my body and into my creases.  Even the far off sound of the highway seems magical in this moment, a hum almost like distant chanting.

The sun is falling behind the trees now, and the cold of the water is finally settling into our bones.  Without the sun’s warmth, the teeth have been set chattering, and we reluctantly rinse the creek dirt from our hands, our feet. We hold hands, and with great remembrances already, slodge our way down the worn path back to the house.  My brain gets a little stuck, because I can’t quite seem to tease out this miracle of time: these are my Little Ones, telling their story, but it is such a familiar one I can’t understand that it isn’t mine.