Arms Full of Good Things

I am grateful. Grateful for your little up turned noses. For your deep brown eyes, an mysteriously green/grey that peer unashamed into my own. I am grateful for the way both of your hair tends to fall down into your eyes over and over again. For it allows me to brush it back again. I treasure the light in your face when you play outside in the cool dirt. The way you soak up the spring sunshine. I love that you can’t even be out there five minutes alone. Any longer than that, you need to show me something, or you want me to help you get dirt out of your shoe. I love that because of you I need to step away from my work into the bright sunshine as well.

If tomorrow I were to find out that my days with you were numbered like Kara Tippets, I wonder what I would see that I am missing today. What things would become the most precious to me. The sound of your fat baby feet patting on the wood floor? The way you giggle one minute and scream the next. The fluid changing of our daily life together.

I love watch with a glow as you both cuddle onto your daddy’s lap and read a story. The way your little heads drop wearily onto his shoulders. I peek around the corner as you wrestle, a bit of my heart stops with how wild you three are, but I quietly step away and allow you to make these memories with your father. Inevitably when someone gets hurt it is my arms you run.

I love being the one that can comfort you. Taking your small bodies into my arms to hold them. I love that yesterday you asked me if you could go back into my tummy, because you just wanted me to hold you even closer. I love that when I said, “No, you will not fit anymore.” That your little face fell, but that you brightened when I offered to hold you like a baby. I love that when ever I lay, you both want to be right there with me. When I sit, you want to be at my feet or in my lap.

When I left for the weekend, I looked forward to it all month, but when the days leading up to it came, I hardly knew what I would do with myself. I asked “What did I enjoy doing before they all came into my life?” All I could think of were long lonely days in a top bunk. Quiet evenings that I longed for a family circle. Longing to have a place to belong, when I moved alone to a large new city.

Yes, the days with you can seem long. Yes, my arms feel too full sometimes. I have realized that my arms are full of good things though. So many good things, that even though I am tired of carrying them, I never want to put them down. I never want to let you go.