It was a heavy weekend; 3 types of chill and frozen wind where I hoped there would have been sunshine. Those expectations were so cruelly buried under snow like the poor star violets on our lawn. It's okay though, I feel a glowing hearth/heart where it is most needed. The little Stranger is trying to escape with determined lurchings. I love it when I see Laurel (fetus whisperer!) and she can decode the frenzied spasms because sometimes I can feel him in 3 places at once and he shifts so radically that I don't understand how he can possibly still be head down, but so far, so good! He is so active and alive these days! I always want everyone else to feel his bumping and thrashing; I'm constantly pulling Jonathan's hands to my belly. Yesterday sitting on the couch during conference we felt him backin' that thing up with gusto and Jonathan asked, what does that feel like? I said, "Sweet, it just feels really sweet." I love him and I love feeling him, my little boy in the bubble. I have no idea who he is! When I try to imagine our interactions on the Other Side they seem pixelated in mystery. I talk out loud to him in the car and tell him not to be afraid, I ask, will you be my friend? Sometimes working at Vantage Point gives me a little jolts of despair from the inevitability of adolesence; I hope we will have some sweet years when he will trust and believe in us, want us around. I hope those years feel very long. :)
Two poems for Monday morning:
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.
--Kahlil Gibran
Metaphors
I'm a riddle in nine syllables,
An elephant, a ponderous house,
A melon strolling on two tendrils.
O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!
This loaf's big with its yeasty rising.
Money's new-minted in this fat purse.
I'm a means, a stage, a cow in calf.
I've eaten a bag of green apples,
Boarded the train there's no getting off.
--Sylvia Plath
4 comments:
Racher! I love what you wrote about asking baby to be your friend...thats the cutest thing in the world. I love the poems. I've read the sylvia plath one before, but never read the gibran one. I like it a lot...I often wonder with how stubborn I am if I will be able to let our child be himself. But hes a little sweetie, you'll see...there I go deciding what hes like already!
All I can say is you two are the cutest people I know!
hey rache, thanks for posting that first poem, I've been trying to come to peace with the idea of raising children when I'm quite flawed and those ideas are helpful.
Thank you for your blog Rachel. I really enjoyed the Gibran poem, too. That is the best thing I have read from him so far. Your writing is so good to read when I'm feeling worried or weary, because it takes all of the intangible things that slip away so fast and makes them seem more real. I don't know if that makes sense, but thank you for writing. :)
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