Sorry I’ve been awol. In rebooting my computer, I needed to address some security issues and that locked me out of the administration element of this blog. It took me a weekend to figure out what to do, and another week before I got around to doing it…during which time I had surgery to remove the chemo port. I declare Victory of Battle No. 3 against cancer. (Victory No. 1 Biopsy/detection. Victory No. 2 Mastectomy) Now we start the radiation. z
This week, my sixth turned eighteen. They are flying through the years and it shocks me how much time I’ve been blessed to spend with them. It makes me wish somehow I’d spent more, that I’d worried about needing to get things done less, and watched them more.
On Thursday, my youngest son celebrated the end of his basketball season with his team. They ate pizza and played against the adults. I volunteered as score keeper. While he didn’t get into the physical nature of this final game, he did love the shoot out at the three point line –and he won, making two in a minute over everyone else’s one. His teammates were both shocked and pleased by his shooting.
Friday, we sang happy birthday and ate red velvet cake. It was a slow birthday and yet personal. I felt very proud of this son who somehow grew up when I wasn’t looking.
Today it snowed. I spent time watching it fall. The beauty of a snowfall is it calls one to just stop and watch. Because my daughter stopped to watch, she saw a fox run through the back yard. My husband made bread from scratch. We looked through scrap books for my son for baby pictures, and it led us to memories and moments we’d somehow forgotten, but which came back seared in the heart when we saw them face to face. All these moments, they’re what we should be treasuring from life.
Post-pandemic seems to be happening. I am both glad (world health wise) and sorry for the end of this stillness that allowed for baked bread, family dinners and a little more slow time watching all of them grow up. It was both a Lent and a sacred hidden time that we would have lost speeding through errands and chores and activities if we hadn’t had to be so removed from each other the past two years. My son’s sixteenth was interrupted by the start of Covid closures, whereas his eighteenth is hallmarked by the opening of everything, the removal of masks.
Now, ordinary life seems much too swift. However, the slow time reminds us that all of this time, is ours to spend, and thus the how of spending it becomes what matters. Use this Lent well, spend the time, waste it well on those you love most, and gather the fragments in pictures and stories so that none of the seconds will be lost.
(It’s laundry but there are more than twelve baskets, and it is a case of gathering up the fragments if you count the basket full of unmated socks).
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