A Need to Contemplate the Obvious

Things change. In the nucleus of my life, the daily developments of my children around me are so furtively incremental, it takes a stepping out, to get the whole picture. For their summer camperships, I fill out the girls' paperwork, detailing their traits and capabilities, whatever the counselors need to know for the sake of group dynamics. It is only an annual activity, this, and so it is with some mild misgiving that I look over what I have written, and note the differences in my assessments and admit, they have grown, not only in stature, but in mind and spirit, the things that make them persons. Likewise, at the start of each homeschool year, I work up a list of my academic expectations for each child, and on a quarterly basis I have to report on how much has been covered, and reflect on what has been absorbed. Often enough, I can chart the influence of our readings, writings, cipherings and discussions. In such moments when I have paused to think it over, a conflict of triumph and trepidation stirs within.

This is not new; the juxtaposition of a parent's mission to train the children for their destinies, against the trauma of having that mission end, is as old as reproduction...and so it is obvious. That being said, if there is any redeeming defect in man, it must be our passion for dwelling on our experience. Perhaps we are not always out to learn from what is befalling us, but just to solidify what we can keep forever, the recollection. Memory can be passed on from one generation to the next, as all else cannot, being consumable. I can remember having a piece of chewing gum for the first time, the texture, taste, and scent of it; although the gum is long years gone, the memory of pleasure remains. I remember what each of my labors felt like, and the rapture of holding each newly born baby; I am grateful that these moments are part of my fabric.

So now, how to face with graciousness the entrance of my oldest child into her freshman year, while the two-year-old has refused the crib for a toddler bed, and is eyeing the big-boy single bed. Sometimes I send the oldest to wipe the youngest's bottom, and then I have the flash of a circle completing itself while I have stepped out of it..and so I resolve, not to give over those mundane, seemingly meaningless little tasks, because on this side of eternity, things do come to an end. Like a mama spider, I sometimes feel the need to wrap my arms around the whole picture at once, to suck every impression into my soul, before it changes...before it fades.