Little Hercules

Max
a boy
all boy
always crawling towards, pulling up, climbing over,
all of a sudden standing up
all on his own, up and down in carefully-balanced deep knee bends.
Stable as a rock.
Stalking the backyard, left foot, right foot, left
Safely gripping the nearest available finger or wagon or coupe car.
Sometimes holding a sister's kneecap or, unknowingly, her hair.
Once just a roly, poly basketball wobbling under his weight,
Though his legs never wavered...
All so he can get to the next big find.
The next moth-filled butterfly cage.
The treasure-filled sandbox.

Sometime soon, he'll bravely trust those hard won leg muscles, and
All of a sudden he'll know his own strength.

Hercules,
with the invincible power of one sister
and the brilliant caution of the other sister,
will be unstoppable this summer!

And I will have one job... to be his shadow... or safety net when the time is right.

Momentum

Lately, I've caught myself marveling at the momentum of our days. It's all I can do to keep up!

This isn't a bad thing at all. Suddenly, at almost 7 and peering over the hill at 5, my daughters can entertain themselves quite a lot.

Assuming that they are well-rested, well-fed, and fairly healthy (allergies not included), they come up with all kinds of hilarious way to entertain themselves.

Like this morning, when they were trying to walk a "high wire" (actually, an old, corded phone we found in the emergency box) between their two twin beds. Luke Dunfey, anyone?

What could be better than that? More often than not, I catch Maya teaching her little sister a game or activity or method of play that I used to do with her.

This was Saturday. The whole day. Pool play for all three kids, while Joe and I tinkered, gardened, picnicked with them and staged water fights. The grand finale was dinner over the campfire. Saturday. Otherwise known as the perfect day!

It feels like all of the good things I set in motion when Maya was very little (Elle was just months old) set the tone for our family life. Today, we just follow along in that path I carved using a million helpful ideas from other moms and activity books found at garage sales.

When Maya isn't home, I do snag the odd book from the shelf and get inspiration for Wizard's Potions or self-drying pinch pots or some other new curiosity. But either I'm better at following the kids' lead or they have been told "why don't you try" often enough that their creative wheels start whirring as soon as their little feet hit the floor.

Did I mention he can stand all on his own. He walks with just the smallest grip on your pinky finger. He's cautious, but ready. Any day now, he'll be brave enough to launch out on his own!

And in case you are wondering, that's about 6 am most days. Still. By the time they sleep in, I won't remember how!

As I gather fresh ideas for summer fun, I'm watching for projects that the kids can recreate on their own, riff on, and otherwise reinvent in ways that will surely astound and possibly defy gravity (I'd also better gather a few extra bandages).

Mama - Master of the Universe

I won't lie to you. This mama is in the thick of some full days. It's hard to be mindful of everyday joys when you're rushing to wring out every last ounce of productivity from a tired body.

All it takes is a few moments of quiet to shine a light on the beauty in this tumbling mess of a perfectly typical Midwestern suburban life.

I just read that line from Gatsby where Fitzgerald's narrator refers to "one of the great cities in the Middle West" as having once felt like the very heart of home and now [since his character has seen bigger and better things] seems more like the frayed edge of the universe.

We may not all be looking at the camera, but this is my favorite from this morning's photoshoot.

These days, our little place in this great Middle West city feels like the very heart of the sun. In fact, many days I have this odd sense of myself as that burning, life-giving heart of our galaxy. I am the sun pulling all of my various planetary bodies along in their orbits with the sheer force of my will, and occasionally an ice cream treat.

Some days it does feel like an astronomical force of gravity to get my little beings headed in the right direction, or any direction, and after them the various other orbits of the rest of our hopes, plans, and obligations.
I mean this not as a whine but as, gulp, a small bit of boasting.

At the end of the day, the amount I've accomplished (though most tasks barely have a title much less an end result) fills me with a sense of strength and satisfaction. This is true even on the days when my main accomplishments include getting a small person with erupting teeth to sleep long enough to heal and writing maybe one worthwhile paragraph toward my deadline.

And I am not at all remarkable.

This is motherhood. It is a solar feat.

I see the solar effect in all of the wonderful mothers I know. My friends and I are all supported by loving, wonderful partners, but the force that propels all the varying aspects of daily life through to conclusion, an effort that can only be described as Herculean, invariably has mother at its source.

 None of us is perfect. We're all too hard on ourselves for the errors we make along the way. But for this one (admittedly over-Hallmarked) day, we deserve a moment to marvel at the universe of our creation, at the physical, emotional, creative, and mental energies that we expend everyday in our efforts to create a good life for our small galaxy of beings.

Happy Mother's Day to you all. Enjoy this day of rest!