Savoring the Sweetness of Vanishing Moments

I was chatting in the park the other day with a new acquaintance; this sweet, dear woman was telling me how difficult she was finding the whole 'motherhood' thing and I was nodding sympathetically. She expressed an intense longing for the time when her kids were a little older and it was a little easier.
I don't know what it is with me the past couple weeks, but I've started feeling just the teensiet bit sad whenever I hear someone, or even myself, say "I can't wait until______(fill in the blank examples: my kids are feeding themselves/putting their shoes on/staying dry at night/sleeping through the night/doing their own laundry/wiping their own noses etc.) This is a pretty big shift for me because I spent the first three years of C+J's life talking about how I couldn't wait for them to do xyz that I thought would make my life more comfortable).
Lately I'm truly realizing that each stage has its own set of treasures and they go by in a blink- when the babies aren't sleeping through the night they're preciously soft and spectacularly cuddly and yummy and tiny and new, and when they aren't potty-trained they're learning to really communicate and they think every tiny mundane thing about the world we live in is a stupendous miracle, and when they're still wetting the bed they have the most vivid imaginations and the whole world is alive with magic and secrets and screaming with glee. I took the kids to the pharmacy today and while waiting for quite awhile (seriously we were there for 45 minutes even though it was a call-in) we had a blast playing monster behind a $4 MedicationSpecial display. I looked a little crazy play-grabbing at them, (what else is new) but I've been embracing the fact that my kids are at the stage when they're happier having fun and so am I. A random older lady even joined me in playing monster. She just came up, said 'boo' and hid behind the display and left giggling. While hiding behind the display C&J found three hollow cardboard inner tubes and worked together to hold them just right so they'd make them a long tunnel for a dark blue ring they got at the dentist's office to fall through. The entire pharmacy line was watching them, spellbound, to see if the engineering was correct enough for the ring to make it through the tunnel on each drop. People even cheered a little when they made it.
I wish I could have frozen that moment and kept it cupped in my hands forever, that time when we waited at the pharmacy for 45 minutes but it felt a lot less and we entertained 7 people with a blue dentist ring. But strangely, I find savoring the moments hurts a little, like taking a deep breath in the dead of winter when the air tastes so good and clean at first and then the sharp cold completely burns your lungs. I start to savor, but then I get a little sad because it reminds me that it will soon be gone. Who knows when we'll be there again, and when we are the boys might be in kindergarten, or they won't want to play monster behind the saline solution. I read about someone who, whenever she got to a new place and started enjoying herself she'd say "I'm going to come back here", like she wanted to save the moment, expand it, hold onto it by pushing it into the future, instead of seeing it for what it was- transient, fragile as butterfly wings, about to evaporate when life pulls us to get in the car and deal with traffic and get dinner going. Her friend would point out that she probably wouldn't go back there, because there were other places to visit, other moments to experience, and even if she came back it wouldn't be the same. There would be different people, and different weather, and all the things that made that moment it's own peculiar blend of joy and pleasure and newness would all be different. There would never be another moment like that again.



A couple Saturdays ago we went to the ballfield next to the temple and just hung out. The kids found a bottle brush tree and played camping under it. Ian and I had such a great time just relaxing with them. I kept thinking, we need to come back, but again, who knows when it will be. Birthday Parties, service projects, bike rides on the beach, u-pick strawberry fields... there are a smorgasboard of things to do and only a handful of free weekends. By the time we get back here again Jack and Christian will be talking.
My friend recently told me about a book that's been described as "telling motherhood like it is, without the flowery nonsense." When shopping for books about being a Stay at Home Mom when I was trying to figure out my new 'job' it seemed like everything had something in the title about Surviving or Survival or something like "Only 16 Hours Until Bedtime", I remember another one with a teddy bear hanging by a noose, its head lolling to one side. The "grit-your-teeth-and-hang-on-for-dear-life-hope-to-see-you-on-the-other-side-of-this-alive" is pretty funny, not inaccurate, and it's everywhere. But I can't help but feel it makes it all out to be a trek of endurance, hair-brained and half-insane, gasping to hold on until I wave my kids off on their first day of kindergarten and slowly start to rebuild my life** (**although I don't deny there is some truth to this)


I may have days where I almost fall off my balcony trying to retrieve a lost throw rug, or I make my house smell like a packed smoker's lounge for an entire week because I badly burned the contents of three separate pans (including an entire pound of bacon and beans in a pot we got for our wedding that sadly had to go in the garbage) but every day I feel more and more like childhood is so alive, astonishing and amazing, almost more for me than for my kids, these perfect moments of rings down tubes and capes and bottle brush trees and shining eyes and dirty faces are so unbelievable in their quiet, perfect completeness that the whole world would just be so happy and I'm just so sure that all wars would cease if everyone got a few of these moments with their kids every day. Last week Julian wore his cape I made/pinned, for him to the mall playground and jumped off hamburgers and hotdogs, totally in the moment. I don't know who was more into it though, him or me. He was living, and I was doing the best I could to savor. I just wished I could have explained all of this to my new friend in the park.

Silver Bells and Cockle Shells

I've written posts in the past about the goals that Ian and I have set this year and last year to eat more fresh, local vegetables. One of the things we wanted to try to do this year was plant a garden. Unfortunately, without a yard this is very difficult. Some might say impossible. Last year we tried to plant some things on the deck- they fared so-so.
So when our friends moved into a house with a really huge yard and mentioned they wanted to plant a garden we shamelessly invited ourselves to do it with them. The fact that they said yes speaks volumes about their gracious, kind natures. They really should have told us to take a hike, but they were incredibly Christlike in their decision to share. Also, I hope it's not incorrect to say that they probably wouldn't have planted it we hadn't harrassed them with our eagerness, or at least they wouldn't have planted it for awhile. I ordered some worms, bought some bins, and we made a vermicompost pile a couple months before planting. We also got all the seeds weeks before planting. And we called in a favor to get the soil tested. Yes, our kind-hearted friends probably figured it was better to let us in on it and rescue ourselves from all that energetic enthusiasm that was bound to waste away on a couple sad little pots on the patio.
We weren't sure what to expect- last garden attempt was back in our old place and it didn't do so well. I wouldn't be exaggerating to say that pests ravaged, shredded, and annihilated it, despite our efforts to use good compost and lots of insecticide.
After a week or two

But this time around we used more and better manure, plus the worm tea, and there's been a lot of rain this season. It's grown fast and we've been enjoying kale, chard and bok choy that has been incredibly delicious (and we actually know what to do with it thanks to the farm box we've been getting). It's fun to see the kids getting into it to- I nicknamed them 'the hose team' because they were so excited to bring the hose around to the garden to help water it with the 'worm tea' a few weeks ago.
the hose team in action-


Baby Bok Choy stage:
We planted it mid-February and were eating yummy baby bok choy just a few weeks later. The first night we cooked it the kids downed it by the handful, I kid you not. I just couldn't believe it. We'll see if we can keep it going. It's hard to find time to get over there, and our friends are busy too so it's hard to find time to have us ove so we'll see what happens, but in the meantime I'm pretty grateful we've been able to give our kids a garden experience here in the middle of the city from our yardless apartment. It's also been great to get to know our amazing friends the Mammens better.