I read the book to them for the zillionth time. Eyes sparkle as if the words have never fallen on their ears before. "Open!" "Open!" The one with curls exclaims and drags the bag of legos to my feet. We stack the tower that is never finished because little hands much prefer to knock it down. Then we make our daily attempt at using the crayons until the adventurous one takes a bite or two. Back into the closet they go while I am hoping she has not acquired a permanent taste for colored wax. They call for a "Nack!" and I whisk them into the highchairs for a snack of goldfish and applesauce. Giggles fill the room as I tickle our way through naming the body parts of my captive audience.
Our days are mostly the same. The routine doesn't change that much. Except that it will in 4 weeks when we add another tiny, wiggly one to the mix. I have the first short gasps of panic as I think of how we will all adjust when the grandmothers have gone home. And I am in charge again. Alone. All day. With all 3 of them! How will we survive the busyness and the not sleepingness and the messiness and the toddler clingyness? How will I meet all the needs of these three teensy pairs of eyes that will look to me almost every waking minute?
And then I remember. The lessons in the dark.
I remember the weight on my chest and how I could barely breathe from the pressing pain after she was taken from me. The emptiness of aching arms. The suddenness of disaster. The grinding away to nothing of my heart that repeated itself each morning when my eyes cracked open. And how I thought to myself, "I can never live the same way again. I simply cannot go on breathing if my focus stays on what I can see." What I could see, and what I had seen, were just too terrible. So in my drowning I grasped desperately for something more. Something eternal. I begged for a view of heaven... for both my literal eyes and my paradigm of life. I thought if I couldn't learn to live in a way where my focus was on the eternal weight behind things, then I simply would not be able to keep living.
It is so easy here in the light to forget what we have learned in the dark. So I whisper a prayer that these most agonizing lessons will not be forgotten. That my vision will not grow clouded by sinks full of dishes and crying and 10,000 dirty diapers. That I will not feel the weight so much of things that are not really weighty. That I will be able to teach my girls in the light what Mommy had to learn in the dark. In the deepest of darkness. That I will not stop begging for a view of heaven here...
Our days are mostly the same. The routine doesn't change that much. Except that it will in 4 weeks when we add another tiny, wiggly one to the mix. I have the first short gasps of panic as I think of how we will all adjust when the grandmothers have gone home. And I am in charge again. Alone. All day. With all 3 of them! How will we survive the busyness and the not sleepingness and the messiness and the toddler clingyness? How will I meet all the needs of these three teensy pairs of eyes that will look to me almost every waking minute?
And then I remember. The lessons in the dark.
I remember the weight on my chest and how I could barely breathe from the pressing pain after she was taken from me. The emptiness of aching arms. The suddenness of disaster. The grinding away to nothing of my heart that repeated itself each morning when my eyes cracked open. And how I thought to myself, "I can never live the same way again. I simply cannot go on breathing if my focus stays on what I can see." What I could see, and what I had seen, were just too terrible. So in my drowning I grasped desperately for something more. Something eternal. I begged for a view of heaven... for both my literal eyes and my paradigm of life. I thought if I couldn't learn to live in a way where my focus was on the eternal weight behind things, then I simply would not be able to keep living.
It is so easy here in the light to forget what we have learned in the dark. So I whisper a prayer that these most agonizing lessons will not be forgotten. That my vision will not grow clouded by sinks full of dishes and crying and 10,000 dirty diapers. That I will not feel the weight so much of things that are not really weighty. That I will be able to teach my girls in the light what Mommy had to learn in the dark. In the deepest of darkness. That I will not stop begging for a view of heaven here...
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