Otherwise

More and more you are reaching forward, out, away from yourself.

Uncle Nels is giving Thisbe a bath.  A great gift especially considering that tonight is one of the few nights Nels doesn't have to give his own daughters a bath.  He also went with Grandma Gail to watch your sister dance today.  Apparently she was especially excited when it was her turn to pretend to be a rock.

We vacuumed today.  We put Thisbe's spring coats in the basement.  We cleared books and Thisbe's drawings and car keys and cell phones and manila folders off the dining room table and set it with blue Fiestaware plates.  We ate baked potatoes with garlic slivered into the middles.  

You tasted pears.  You produced your first solid, grown-up poop.  You touched the piano keys while Grandma Gail played and sang to you.  You shoved the nose of a stuffed reindeer as far into your mouth as possible.  You gleefully raised your legs and brought them down over and over again, little exclamation marks punctuated into the carpet. 

I read over Jim's words today, his essay in our book that will be published in May.  I was supposed to be looking for errors but I kept thinking about him.  How different it is to read the words now, when he is on the other side of them.  How nice it is to hear his voice; how awful not to have his presence.

I read Thumbelina to Thisbe at Blue Monday.  I drank the rest of her hot chocolate on the way home.  I unfolded a blue fleece that came in the mail.  I listened to a message from my best friend (her child's first birthday, saying good-bye to people she loves, an upcoming move, a massage to look forward to)  I listened to other friends talk about illness and doubt.

I almost titled this "The Most Boring Post in the World," not so much because nothing interesting happened today, but because my brain doesn't seem to be working well enough to draw any significance or insight from the seemingly unremarkable.  But then I thought of Jane Kenyon's poem "Otherwise."  I remembered that I will be on the other side of these words someday too.  And, sweet boy, maybe someday mine will be the voice that you are longing to hear.

More and more you are reaching forward, out, away.