After my last column detailing Col’s concussion, I received many kind emails. Thank you. One comment flew, express-delivery, straight to my heart: “These children we are guardians of are a gift. A treasure. Each day, each hug is a present. These people we share life with, our partners and spouses, they are also a gift. Life is a gift. It is not something we get to own or have a right to.”
I’ve been thinking about this as I rub arnica oil over Col’s eight gnarly head-stitches, as my children climb into my bed at too-early-30 every morning. These children we are guardians of are a gift. This is the truest prayer-poem of parenting I know.
This is not to say that we’re supposed to enjoy every moment – that is a farce devised by well-meaning grandmotherly types who simply don’t remember what it’s like to watch your daughter enact the play Sisyphean Jewelry Making, in which she threads minuscule beads onto a nearly invisible wire only to have the entire string of beads crash to the ground just before it’s finished, every single time.
But to remember that we are guardians of gifts? That is like stepping on the true Wheel of Fortune, in which each turn increases the only real wealth we’ll ever have. It’s the old physics equation: cherishing others equals gratitude equals generosity equals happiness equals cherishing others. Cherishing others pries that crazy heart muscle open, and so to love others (as) unconditionally (as possible) is a gift to ourselves.
It’s like my neighbor Frankie says, gratefully, when he’s got no less than three of his grandchildren ransacking his house: “I get them every afternoon!”
When my heart is open, all the slights and slings of the world have a little more space to land, perhaps even getting lost underneath the way my kids have been saying lately, “if it’s not a hassle, Mama, could you get me an apple with peanut butter?”
The fact that life is not something we get to own or have a right to is tops on my To Remember Daily list. When I keep this information close, like a note in my back pocket, it helps me remember that most of my problems are what real problems eat for breakfast. Because even as my children are entering the Olympic Pushing The Envelope competition, or leaving the day’s 10 costume changes on the floor like a trail of bread crumbs in case they ever lose their way back to the dress-up box, or are squabbling mightily over whether today is actually Oct. 16 as they did this morning, this is the small stuff.
What rises like cream to the top of every day is the luckiness of this life. And now these two great gifts are asking me to make breakfast if it’s not too much of a hassle.
Reach Rachel Turiel at sanjuandrive@frontier.net.Visit her blog, 6512 and growing, on raising children, chickens and other messy, rewarding endeavors at 6,512 feet.
