My children are 8 and 6. It is life’s biggest cliche and most painful truism that just yesterday they were babies. This week my friend Kris pointed me to Julie’s post about watching her children play in the ocean and I gasped, remembering watching my own children in the Massachusetts coast waves this past summer. They were 5 and 7, she towered over him, he was just learning to swim.
Admittedly, I am tired, having been away from home and not sleeping very much. I’m even more porous than usual. But I sat at someone else’s desk in my firm’s New York office with tears rolling down my face as I read Julie’s gorgeous words. “… I’ve caught lightning here, in these slender vessels …” Julie writes, and my heart tightens with identification. It’s all so astonishing, so baffling and overwhelming at the same time, and I feel awash, often, in the swarming wonder that is parenting. My own children, growing tall and lanky in front of my eyes, their childhood passing in one swift swirl of color, the brilliance of their being here flashing intermittently like a firefly in the dark.
Julie’s photographs remind me of ones I took last summer and posted here. There is something both profoundly moving and absolutely apt about children – the definition of liminal beings – playing along the border where earth becomes water. Threshold-dwellers dancing at an essential threshold.
I suppose I’m just extra-aware right now, after long days away, of the piercingly poignant reality of Grace and Whit’s lives. I feel abundantly grateful for their health and in frank awe of the basic fact of them. It’s all such a gift, this opportunity to be in the presence of nascent human beings, to witness them step through these never-to-be-revisited halls of childhood, to watch their minds and personalities form. They are as sturdy as they are evanescent, corporeally present even as they seem to waft by me, evading capture.
So true. So beautifully said. So glad you are home.
XOXO
Gorgeous. I adore this line: “their childhood passing in one swift swirl of color, the brilliance of their being here flashing intermittently like a firefly in the dark.” So happy you and your heart are home. xoxoxo
Oh wow. Crying now—both joyful and sad tears. I think you said it all, and so beautifully, too!
I’ve just returned from a business trip as well. It felt so good to get home and see the kids through the glass in our front door. When I got inside, Marissa jumped up into my arms and happily kissed me. I’m glad they’re still at the phase where they’re so excited to have their dad come home.
Just this morning, as I dressed my 2 year-old, I marvelled how swiftly he’s changing from baby to boy. And I reminded myself to snuggle and cuddle a little longer.
Terrific post…
I read here often but have never commented. Today you hit on feelings that have been swirling through me strongly in the past few days:”frank awe in the basic fact” of my kids and sadness at “never-to-be-revisited” nature of it all. Thank you.
Read Julie’s post – every eloquent.
“What is it about the ocean that can soothe us and make us delight in just being there, being alive, walking and thinking about nothing and everything at once?”
So true, well said. I deeply love the ocean and try to get my kids there every year, just before school starts.
I love this post, beautiful!
Dear Lindsey,
I’m delighted that my Guiding Spirit, Kris M., shared this post with you. Blogging the kids gets ever more tricky as Phoebe heads toward adulthood; about the only thing I get away with any more is marveling at her beauty, and soon even that will have to stop, I fear, as there’s no doubt I’ll find some novel way to embarrass her.
And now, not because I am using your beautiful blog as an ad for my own, but because I know you’ll like it, I would like to send you this post
http://juliezickefoose.blogspot.com/2010/10/wha-ha-happened.html
about the first time Phoebe dressed up for a dance and Liam really noticed that something was different about her. This post makes me laugh and then I cry.
Yours is lovely. I’ve finally figured out what they meant when they said, “It goes so fast!” She’s 14. She’ll be gone so soon.
Thank you. If I were the kind of person who writes “Enjoy!” that might be what I’d write here, but I’m not. So thank you.
Julie Zickefoose
This is so beautiful! I have been thinking about you and hope you are doing well with all the stress and work in your midst.
xoxo
And when the air is dry, sometimes a little blue spark might fly from them to us and electrify us with the sort of presence you speak of here. Namaste
Sturdy and evanescent–those terms describe my little ones, too. It’s often when I’ve been away from them, and feel both tired and somehow overwhelmed by the world, that the gratitude hits me like thunder.
Yes I so get this “their childhood passing in one swift swirl of color, the brilliance of their being here flashing intermittently like a firefly in the dark.” It hurts that my daughter is growing so fast.