Happy Thought - Extension

At the risk of sounding like a broken record - yes.  This post is also going to be about motherhood.  That's where my mind is these days.

As we have settled into our new routine, I can't seem to get a handle on all of the additional clutter that is appearing in every corner and on my counter tops.  Junk mail, toys, lonely socks and even vegetables from the garden (one of Addie's latest obsessions) accumulate more quickly than I can find homes for them.  I never was one for tasteful decorating, much less perfect order and cleanliness.  I can confidently say that my home is appropriately sanitary.  Beyond that, it's never been anything impressive.  Even my nesting instinct, in the last days of pregnancy, translated into massive amounts of canning rather than decorations for the nursery or deep cleaning.

I'm coming to accept that, despite my best intentions and daily efforts to get on top of my household chores, I'll always be a little bit behind.  Always, or at least, for the next decade or so.  Still, there's something special about the things I see around me lately, from the pictures on the walls to the homeless boxes that live, stacked, in corners, alphabet magnets on an around the refrigerator door.  My earliest memories are of similar things - cracked sidewalks, a screen door that I struggled to open, a blue rocking chair, a wicker laundry basket...  None of them were remarkable, but in my mind, they are accompanied by a soft, pleasant glow.

And this little house, even with my poor decorating and organizational skills, suddenly seems so much more significant as I look around it with those memories in mind.   I begin to see how the little trappings in and around our home now will remain with my children, pixels of the images that they will one day call their childhood.  

My Happy Thought

In the few short weeks that have followed the appearance of our Ellie, I have found myself daydreaming from time to time.  I have caught myself thinking, half-consciously, now we're a real family...

I know that that's ridiculous.  We were a real family before Ellie was born, before she was even thought of.  Ben and I were a real family even before Addie came to us.  We were a real family from the day we were married, when we committed to be a forever unit, to build one another up and to grow together for the rest of our lives and long after.

But life is a long time - not to mention eternity - and I can't help thinking about it, envisioning family photos taken someday in a studio or on a carpet of fallen leaves.  When I was a new bride, my husband was one of the only real certainties of my future.  There would be him, me...and whatever other family members might happen along.

Almost a year and a half later, Addie came into our lives, and they were, of course, changed forever.  My imaginary family portraits began to feature her little face as well.  Alongside the baby pictures that began to appear on our walls, I saw, in my mind, other pictures - the first day of kindergarten, Christmases and family reunions to come.  And yet, in addition to Addie, the pictures included a number - no one can say how many - of nameless, faceless little strangers.

Ellie is yet another piece to that puzzle.  Now that she is here, I feel that I know something more about both of my daughters than I did before.  Each one adds a new backdrop to the other's life.  Each adds a clarifying line to the vague contour of our future as I see it before us.  All of those yet-untaken photographs are one less part imagination and on more part reality.

So, in those moments of sunshiny contentment, this is what I see - lots of murky, undefined years, but each one is filled with my girls, my husband and with abundant promise.

Venturing

I thought I had this parenting thing figured out.  Surely, being able to go about my business with a rambunctious toddler in tow, and being able to keep her happy entails some sort of motherly prowess, right?

Well, this week, with my mom gone back home and my husband gone back to work, I'm getting to really get my feet wet, on my own with both girls for the first time.  As if being at home with both of them weren't sort of a trial by fire, our 2-week well-child check-up fell on the first day of mommy's lonely reign.

I spent all morning preparing, trying to get myself and both girls in a state of being fed, clean and ready to go.  We still got out the door barely on time.  As I pulled onto the interstate, anxieties began to rise.  I felt a profound weight of responsibility hanging on my shoulders.  I had forgotten something, I was sure of it.  Reaching behind me, I found Ellie's little head with my fingertips, just to reassure myself.  It wasn't enough.  I pulled off again at the first exit and found a place to pull over, just so that I could turn around completely to see that my baby was, indeed, asleep in her car seat.  Sufficiently calmed, I took courage and we continued along the freeway toward town.

Despite its inauspicious start, the outing went quite smoothly.  We got back home all in one piece, but exhausted, and I found that I suddenly had a new respect for my sisters-in-law, mother-in-law, mother and the other women in my life who raised or are raising their children cheerfully and accomplishing and learning other things besides.

If anyone would have asked a month or two ago, whether I knew what I was getting into, I would have had to answer honestly that I didn't.  While I understood conceptually that a second child would add substantially to my stress and busyness, I knew even then that I hadn't really internalized it.  Then again, I wonder if anyone is ever really ready to have a child.  I'm convinced that it is always, to some degree or another, an act of faith.

As I walked from the clinic, I was shepherding Addie along beside me and had Ellie's unwieldy car seat slung over my opposite forearm.  A passerby observed, with a smile, "You have your hands full!"  My mind went back to words from a blog I had read years before, and I almost repeated them aloud: "Yes they are - full of good things!"

I am so grateful for my life and what it has become.  It is not what I envisioned.  I am grateful for these little years and for the opportunity to choose to embrace them.

I was blessed to come across this video a couple of months ago.  The address on which it is based is one of the things that really gave me the courage to unashamedly pursue motherhood...but that's a topic for another post.