The short and long view

It’s now been over three months since I started reading Katrina Kenison’s The Gift of an Ordinary Day. I’d picked it up even before that, but three months ago I devoured as much as I could while away from my kids at a conference. Since I’ve been back, time has been scarce amid getting unpacked, finding solutions for our new home, work, and tending to my health. But that’s okay; I get the feeling that I’m meant to stretch out the reading — that completing the book too fast would make me miss the point. Or points.

Today I read some on the plane while my toddler daughter sat next to me snacking and my six-year-old son sat reading across the aisle. The topic at hand was taking the “long view,” seeing each moment as its own and yet also knowing it is fleeting and that a life is made up of so many of them.

I am the youngest child of my family with two sisters (and in-laws) who have older children. It is humbling to watch these once-little people grow from nothingness, just a hoped-for possibility, to full-on adults who tower over me.

Being a younger sibling not only shapes your growth as an individual, but also as an parent. If I hadn’t watched all these children grow and mature, starting out in this world as they did on the cusp of my own adulthood, I might feel more mired in the messiness of the moment in my work as a mother. But right before my eyes are the reminders that nothing lasts for all that long.

It’s a curious thing, the balance of appreciating each moment and also putting it in a context to consider how it will lead to your eventual goal for your child to be a healthy, happy human.

Mothering, now and later
It is a unique skill
to live in a way
that honors the moment
and allows children
to turn and ripen
without a schedule
while holding a vision
for the future
that guides today’s choices,
and dampens disappointments,
and reassures
that reverence will find a place
among moments filled
with crumbs and tears

How do you frame your visions for your children’s futures, and their now?

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After casting aside my poetry hat for far too long, my NaBloPoMo plan is to write a poem — and to take and post a photo — every day in November, spending less than half an hour on both. The hope is to drill down, to focus, to look for and create beauty.

Day 1: Eleven One

Day 2: Shoreline

Day 3: Damage

Day 4: On Parenting and Sunrises

Day 5: When will we?

Day 6: Voting Line

Day 7: What I want my children to learn from me

Day 8: Haiku

Day 9: Reminders

Day 10: Routine

Day 11: Lux Esto, in moderation

Day 12: Family Photo Shoot at (nearly) 4o