Everything has made me cry today;
Things I’ve read, things I’ve thought,
the general state of the world.
My youngest daughter, Paige, is now sick with whatever I’ve had for days, and she is, possibly, the world’s hardest to handle sick patient.
She has come to me crying several times today, herself, and I’ve tried to comfort her by reminding her that these things – illnesses, conflicts, and trials, come on and deplete us, make us feel terrible as they pound us, but then, little-by-little, we get well again.
Sometimes I catch myself in my own words.
As I have been thinking about the stand I take as a person,
As I have contemplated what I feel is required of me and my character going forward,
it is just like that moment:
Open arms for those who are hurting, who I identify so much with,
and to keep giving reminders that we always push through what tries to break us.
Rest, water, the true light, and gentleness,
and then the healing can come.
My couch has lovingly been named “The Couch For People Who Don’t Have it All Together” for years by people who have showed up to collapse and cry on it.
I will simply never believe that this tough, militant, bullying, all-about-me sense-of-existence is now the voice of the entire world.
Too many people have needed that same hug, that same couch, so, going forward,
I will keep on opening my door.
I will do it because my children are watching me.
They are looking to see how living is done.
I have seen them use the love I have given them to, themselves, turn and offer hope to the world.
Last week I found out something about Paige that I have thought of ever since then:
She is a good student. Things come easy to her,
but she knows this is not true for everyone.
One of her dear friends is struggling in math and barely passing.
Because of this, she must go spend her breaks and lunches being tutored by the teacher at school.
Paige casually mentioned she has been going to sit with her through it.
Not because she has to. Not some law set, or rule that was made.
It was simply in her heart that this is how love is shown, and the visual of her sitting beside a friend with a problem that didn’t apply to her personally has shaken me.
This is what is lacking right now in the world.
When I commented to her about how happy I was to hear of this fact, and what a difference I know this could make for her friend, she shrugged it off as if it was no big deal, but you don’t have to change every heart in giant, sweeping moves, do you?
A ripple can begin when you softly change one.
In the midst of a loudly calling world, bent on distracting me from my purpose here at every turn,
today I found myself in the often humble-feeling space of Mothering servitude:
Dose the medicine, rinse the washcloth out, take Paige’s temperature again.
Now, take it once more.
As a mother for 25 years now, those kinds of acts have become what I sense as the most basic part of me: The caring ones.
(I wondered, while Paige was sleeping, how many times I’ve eyeballed liquid Tylenol cups, how many hot foreheads I’ve felt, how many calls to advice nurses)
At one point, always terrified of ever throwing up, she asked me how I knew this kind of sickness didn’t commonly cause exactly that, and I reminded her that I’ve been through this all before so many times I could practically have a medical degree.
The knowledge of how to take care of these things works like muscle memory now.
You fill the water, you prop the head, you run the bath, you smooth the hair.
Her head in my lap, she is quiet;
Finally still again.
I gently run my hand…
I think, right now, many people have been wondering, like I have, where we go from here –
What can we do for those we love and whom we are watching with concern;
Those we care so much about?
Today, watching my own hands repeat those same old actions I so often have, I remembered what to do with them.
My whole body maintains the memory of how to care.
Those with deep love and empathy will always keep showing up again.
We show up at bedsides, and in phone calls, and in the middle of the night with our own eyes bleary.
We show up in our ten year old T-shirts, with our wild hair.
We show up with the same knowledge, and beliefs, and we love with that same love until the bitter end.
Those of us with faith that is true, transformative, and filled with grace keep shining the light by example, and not through something brute, or militant.
A light on a hill cannot be hidden.
Not even by the brokenness, or hatred, or folly of man.
That cool washcloth on our brow as a kid was never a big thing, was it? But in the moment we needed it, it was enough, wasn’t it?
Those saltines? That ginger ale, and Price is Right on the tube?
That was all it took to heal us, and that is the exact kind of thing that can heal us again.
There is a reason that people can be fully grown, and if they get sick they still want their mom:
A lifetime of other more modern options will just never compare to the feeling we had when we were given that kind of pure, quiet, healing love.
Nothing bottled can replace it.
Nothing money can buy can out-value it.
All misery still makes us crave it, and
It is the only way we will ever truly win at anything this life throws at us:
Simple Acts of Great Love
Mom Outnumbered
Hi! My name is Kerri Green; Wife to Justin, and mother to four highly entertaining daughters -Alena, Chloe, Tessa, and Paige. I am an artist, a writer, a daycare provider, a lover of people, a believer that there is humor and beauty in all things, and the author of Mom Outnumbered; a blog about real family life, and my observations of it. My goal is to make people laugh, to be there for them when they cry, and most importantly, to let them know that they are not at all alone in this up and down world. I live with my family in Sebastopol California, and I am opening the window into our life. So welcome! Come in. Sit down. Just please don’t mind the mysterious wet spots.
