Welcome (Five Minute Friday)

Perfect, our lanky kitten with white paws and chin, welcomes me to the day.  I carry her tucked under my arm and close to my chest and she rattles and shakes with a crackling purr as we descend the stairs together.  

I welcome the day with a large volume of caffeine, darkness and silence, drinking them each in steady gulps, but it isn’t long before little feet patter and pound through the upstairs hallway.  Three little boys pop out of their beds in turn like popcorn kernels heated to bursting.  They take turns running to the potty and standing in the darkness calling down the same question again and again, “When can we wake up?”

“It’s early,” I say, “look how dark it is.  Go back to sleep.”  

Blankets are tucked and kisses exchanged with promises of more kisses later.  

Darkness lingers as the day creeps across the snow white field.

They continue to call and slowly my responses shift, “A few more minutes,” then, “just five more minutes, you can turn the light on now and talk quietly.”

I suck the marrow out of each morning, savoring the cool, quiet darkness that welcomes me and once I've had my fill I turn at last to welcome these warm, loud, little lights as they break into the day.  

Photo Source: Here.

This post is linked with Five Minute Friday. 

To Love What is Passing

I watch the sunrise each morning.  Reading, writing, I pause to turn toward the window.  At first all is black, night’s heavy velvet stretched.  With every glance the scene changes, like clicking through slides in a view finder.  Fog shifts, blue spreads wide one day, then purple or even green the next.  Mist rises off the river I cannot see from here, ghostly lines of white revealing the river’s path.

In the evening I bend and twist while washing dishes, watching the light change again through the kitchen windows.  The sun sets out one side of the house morphing clouds into relief, filling spaces with yellow, etching outlines in gold or pink.  On the other side of the house the light also changes.  

“Rainbow, rainbow,” my son shouts and we all run out the closest door like a crowd fleeing a burning building.  Scurrying around the yard, we search for openings between the tall pines, the out buildings, where the biggest arcs of red, yellow, indigo and all the rest can be seen running like a road through layers of clouds and light.  

The sky’s show changes quickly, morphing like trees in fall.

None of this lasts for long. 

//

My little boy gives me twelve kisses at bed time each night, rapid-fire smacks one right after the other, an exertion of pure love on his part.  He lays his claim of love on me, pressing lips to my cheek and I count to hold them close, these kisses like shafts of light buried in my heart, memories of this passing season of such open love and affection.

The other night, he woke to go to the bathroom and sat waiting for me on the hallway floor, cross-legged, his head bobbing and weaving like a sleepy kitten.  Standing in the bathroom, unsteady, he makes it known, “Me love everyone.”

His heart is open wide like the sky, filled with light and shifting colors that wash across his face with every changing emotion.  This boy of mine moves so quickly soaking in the joy and light of each moment, no matter the shade. 

Last night he marched happy through the kitchen with a giant bowl of plain rigatoni tucked under his arm.  He didn’t get to go to the Halloween parade with Daddy and his older siblings and when his twin brother asked about the plan, he replied, “Me stay home with Mommy . . . and the noodles.” 

When I asked what he loved more – Mommy or the noodles – “Me love noodles,” was his smiling reply. 

//

 

To love what is passing, to open one’s heart to what is in each moment, is to live deeply, fully.  No one pleasure or delight lasts for long and in its passing we expose ourselves to potential loss and grief.  But to live closed off from each moment for fear of its passing is to rob ourselves of much that is truly precious in this life.

Knowing this, I bend my cheek to receive the kisses, I turn my head toward the window, I run toward the rainbow, toward each passing moment to embrace it with arms open wide as I teach my heart to say, "Me love," over and over again. 

This post is linked with Five Minute Friday on the prompt "long." 

Whisper (Five Minute Friday)

I taught the twins to give “Eskimo kisses.”  Levi leans in, all serious, and clasps my head in his hands, one on either side.  Then he swipes his tiny nose side to side against my own.  It is unbearably cute.

Isaiah has become a prolific kisser, especially when it comes to prolonging the bedtime routine.  He also grabs hold, wrapping his arms around my neck and planting three, four, loud smacking kisses on my cheek.  When he wants a hug he says, “Me take hug,” like he’s taking a dose of children’s ibuprofen, a little something sweet to get him through the night.

“Me lovin’ you,” I whisper to Isaiah as he rides on my hip, high and happy.

“Me lovin’ you,” I say my words brushing past Levi’s ear as he hangs from my neck like a monkey. 

//

Last night as my husband and I sat watching TV, the loveliest breeze kept creeping unexpectedly through the window.  Cool and fresh, it caressed us and I couldn’t refrain from commenting on it every time. 

Sitting by the front window in the morning, thrown open to the morning’s coolness, another breeze pulls me away again and again from the laptop’s screen.  The gentle air turns my head toward the mountains and in it somehow I sense the presence of God. 

That breeze grabs hold of me, all serious and light at the same time, like the voice of God whispering, “Me lovin’ you,” and I drink it in with body and soul, a dose of something sweet, like Love, to get me through another day, another night.    

This post is linked with Five Minute Friday on the prompt "Whisper."