Today was grey and overcast.
Rain was softly spitting.
I carried my granddaughter, Mavis, outside for a minute as we ran between her house and mine, and the moments in it had us both giggling, and her squinting with her entire face.
Once inside, we were cozy, still in our pajamas.
We find mismatched ones are the best.
We don’t make the rules.
We can’t explain it.
They just feel the best that way.
I sipped my coffee and turned on her show.
Miss Rachel is her Ride-or-Die, and I often wake singing one of her songs from out of a dead sleep.
Today’s episode was on sharing, and she grinned watching other kids practice it.
We read books as we do.
She brought me many.
The characters in them are friends we have visited many times.
Some of the pages are worn at the edges.
I made her waffles,
and she ate all of my scrambled eggs.
Today had the feeling I love of Home;
Of a sacred place to be,
a sanctuary, shielding us from everything outside that is cold and harsh feeling.
The coldness and harshness are multiplying, it seems,
but within our walls, all is warm, and comfortable.
We are safe inside.
When I closed the door earlier, after the whoosh and click,
there was a stillness.
The dogs were snoring.
For a second there was no other sound but the ticking of the clock,
and the humming sound the refrigerator makes.
It wasn’t anything fancy we came in to, but we knew what to expect there.
Familiar things really are the most priceless sometimes.
I have started holding Mavis for a second when I notice the world feels quiet around us, and speaking in a whisper to her.
I want her to notice silence in her spaces as she grows, and the sound that her own voice makes. Listen to the world. Listen.
In those moments I quietly ask her what she hears, and I know that, in a world full of sounds, there will be times she will hear something different than me.
Is it water dripping?
A creaky floorboard?
A bird high up in some tree canopy?
As she grows, is it a voice that no one seems to hear?
Is it the culture shifting?
Do you hear the difference in the storm,
and in the safety?
If we are listening, the entire world speaks to us about how to live our lives.
I pray she grows noticing the things that take concentration, and learns to focus on what may seem small, and hidden to the outside.
These little “noticing” moments are not just about the things that we can see,
but when you teach lessons of the heart to children, they lay groundwork for things so important, that can transcend all space and time.
I pray so much for her and the world she will inherit.
I pray she grows up and still has room inside for strawberry waffle scented memories of me,
and tells her own grandchildren about how her Grammy used to whisper to her when it was quiet,
but most of all I pray she keeps on learning to share forever.
Giving and loving are the answers to any kind of day.
The world will crumble if it’s built only on greed and pride.
As I watched her today, learning the lessons we all teach children:
To be kind, to tell the truth, to share, and to not take someone else’s things…
As I contemplated my own love of this feeling of safety, of home, and of the simple joys that are so easy for me to feel and see,
I wondered when we all stopped believing and teaching that those things were important?
I know we all learned it from the time we, too, were being held up by our own grandparents.
If we pause for a moment we might notice they’re still asking what we hear, and see all the time.
Why don’t we understand other people want the same things we do for their families:
A place of solace, a familiar book, a gentle hug, a warm drink?
Why isn’t it in us to want these simple things for others?
From the moment we walk, though, our urge is just to grab wildly at everything.
We’re supposed to grow beyond that, but our fingers are still having to be softly pried, as we are told, “That’s not yours. You can’t just take it. You have to share.”
It’s just in us,
but oh, how I wish that every single person could know the way it feels to be at home,
being brought a book by a toddler with that look of love on their face.
I wish every heart could swell, too, with feelings of peace, and simple goodness, like mine is today, at home on a rainy day,
because it soothes you;
That whistling kettle,
That steamy window,
That closing of the harshness of the world outside,
That very first moment of settling…
The Feeling of Being Home is what I wish I could give everyone I carry tonight.
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.
