Days Flying By
My kiddo is going to turn 12 very soon, and I’ve been noticing them growing, without tying it to the passing of time, of time that we will have together and time will change again. I notice the changes without the recognizing how fleeing the time is. Twelve years have flown by. 12 years of hugs. Hugs for sadness, joy, love and everything in between. Apologies, regrets, appreciation and sheer joy. My kid is an excellent hugger. They have been gifted since they were tiny and the daycare folks would comment on “the best hugs”. It’s been there since before they were aware there were such a thing as hugs. I have a picture of them, just a few days old, resting on my lap, both arms outstretched around my recovering belly. My kid has hugged trees and lobsters. Put their cheeks to spiders and birds, baby bunnies and horses necks. There’s just so much love for them to give out. They see with God’s eyes. Nothing is ugly, nothing is undeserving of love and tenderness.
My job has felt a bit like I’m here to ensure they have more to give every day - fill them up and send them out. They still dance and sing, and sprinkle joy along behind them. If I keep filling, will they keep dancing? I hope so.
I worry what this life will make of them. I know their gentle heart is aware of the cruelness of others, the hatred they can’t understand but knows it exists. They have been hurt, been treated cruelly, been doubted, been excluded. Yet, they don’t seem to chose that perspective.
Why don’t we treat this life as our one opportunity to love fully, joyfully, knowing our love could change lives? Fear and hurt and resentment, and the measures of our insecurities seem to enter into nearly everyone. How might we choose something else, consistently? Continuously? Because it is a choice we make every time we take the measure of our love against someone else’s. It’s a choice we make in every breath. It’s a decision to chose one perspective, one idea over another.
Hugging a lobster, and understanding its innate wonder and contribution, its own life and connection, was a choice. Deciding a spider is an incredible work of creativity and art, science and mathematics is seeing with a child’s eyes. What choices will I make today? What choices can we all make, with every breath, to see more wonderous things through the lens of love?
