Soaring and Stillness: Life with the Chickadees

Last night, something miraculous occurred. The phone rang. I answered. In the scope of the everyday ordinary it doesn’t sound like much, the act of seeing a call and accepting it instead of sending it to voicemail. She didn’t want to do anything but talk. Have conversation. Fellowship with me over cellular airwaves.  I answered because outside of immediate family, hers is the number set to bypass do not disturb. The phone knows that outside of regular hours, I’ve let her in.  I think she knows it too. She didn’t call for anything in particular; she was on her way home with an occupied babe in the backseat and had an hour.  She called me. I answered. We talked for the remainder of her trip. The big chick and the professor tried to find a movie to watch and wandered in wondering where I was and when I was coming back. Her little bit was occupied in the car seat and didn’t make a peep. I told them to go ahead without me. She let the golden haired angel watch the coveted tabl...

I love you. I grew up ending most communications with an I love you . It was never route. Always intentional. Mom taught me that when you care about someone you should tell them. So, every phone conversation with my travelling dad ended in those three little words. Mom said we should never miss an opportunity. To this day, I end calls and text conversations with those I care about in exactly the same way. I love you. When we first began dating, the professor always shook his head in wonderment as I called home to check in and then closed the conversation with a quick, "I'll be home on time, I promise. I love you!" After a few months of looking at me like I was an alien, I asked him what was so weird about those words I uttered.  "Nothing," he said, "I just don't get why you tell each other." I was incredibly puzzled and then broached a question that would teach me much about the man I would someday marry..."Don't you tell you...

Eleven years ago you entered our world. Small. Red. Making your voice heard. Three separate due dates: March 4 th (actual), January 28 th (for my health), February 6 th (for yours). On Tuesday, February 8, 2000, you decided you’d join us. At your own pace, in your own time; forty two hours of labor, most of it without great progression. Then from 4 to 10 in a hour and six pushes later, you arrived. I had not allowed myself to fall in love with you. The doctors told me that I carried antibodies that could cause your death if the pregnancy made it to 36 weeks. If . That was the word throughout the weeks you grew and developed. If you made it, if I made it, if my kidneys held out. They told me I wouldn’t get pregnant. I did. At week six they suggested I terminate when bloodwork came back showing more strikes against both of us. I refused. They were wrong. I decided, then and there, that they were wrong. That we’d make it. Together . Those days were not e...

She needs a friend. She searches it out in me, her Mama. The one who sets the rules, makes her brush her still falling out baby teeth, tailors her curriculum, disciplines, and tucks her into bed at night. I look forward to the day where I am less parent and more friend, but that is a good decade or more in our future. She desires it now ...and it makes me wistful that I cannot yet gift it to her. For the time being, I am charged with shaping her heart. She needs a comrade to pal around with, giggle, and share secrets...with which she can be a goof. Her soul, sweet and tender, often bruised by the unkindness of those around her. She’s always been Sensitive Intuitive Reactive In one-too-many ways, grown-up before her time Being incredibly intelligent doesn’t help things; other ten in less than two weeks eleven year olds don’t enjoy better yet prefer conversations with adults or consider those three to four years older “peers”. Most of the tweens she knows are into Tiger Beat magazi...