Dusk

And sometimes you just get lucky because the kids are fighting and can’t play alone, and you happen to have made a pot of soup for dinner at 8am.  So it was last night.  Henry needed a push, and he tugged me out into the milky light.  Sparrows ducked in and out of nests.  Wet grass stuck to feet black from running.  Fallen leaves.  I pushed small backs higher and higher, slender stacks of bones against my palms.  And breathed in fallen pears, half eaten by squirrels, fermenting the sweet air, while small legs pump, pump, pumped.  I have to remember it is nice to be there when dusk falls.

{Preview} Finding Stella

Long before Stella’s birth, her name came to her Mother, like a dagger – clear, unmistakable, true.  I remember Lisa, barely pregnant, whispering into the phone she was 100% sure it was a girl.  Didn’t need the ultrasound to know.  This baby already had her arms curled in Lisa’s auburn hair and a foot in the world’s door.  So she arrived, with a bang:  old-lady soul, tireless agenda, flashing smile, great purpose, and the unmistakable stare of a baby on a mission.  Stella seemed the type of baby you could put on the floor at three months and watch her get up and go.  Never look back.  Bowl you right over - forget about her size.  For Stella is as sweet as they come, but has that true, deep intensity.  Never ceasing to remind you every second of the day she is so much more than a baby.  I think some babies find their way into this world -- aren’t simply born.  Stella is one of them.

Happy Birthday, sweet girl.

And then, reality.

I was glad the rain came; it poured.  Lightening flashed like teeth laughing at the sky, sending birds flap, flap, flapping.  Their brown bodies liquid.  Clouds boiled.  Tiny petals shook.  Early pears thumped the ground. 

I needed the racket.  It thatched away cobwebs, and stopped my bobbing.  It made me take charge of this ruthless month of September. The month when it’s just so easy to want summer back.  The month of drowning, surfacing, drowning, surfacing. The month when you blink, and it is 10pm.  The month when it's painfully obvious your children are one year older.  The month growing becomes tangible. 

One week later, the rain is gone, and they are now one-year-bigger-kids, and I am a one-year-older-mom.  I’ve spent a lot of the early September quiet deciphering between sadness over the start of school, or disappointment I am no longer the mom of a baby.  Either way, both are realities we have to swallow when raising kids.  I just wish they didn’t come so soon.