I love this.
I love this. That my son is sick and needs to be up every hour in order to have his nose wiped, to be held in an upright position and that I have nowhere to be to. I love that I can be exhausted, at the end of my rope emotionally and physically, and I have no boss to answer to, no co-worker to get along with and no customer to satisfy.
I love that my apartment is messy with toys and clothes everywhere. I love tripping over scooter cars and hearing a battery powered animal call from the living room while I make my tea. I love that everything sort of smells like wet towel and that the garbage reeks of dirty diapers, the dishes are stacking up on the counter and the recycling needs to be taken out. I love that as each of these things get taken care of, I feel lighter and more capable. I love the look of an empty garbage can, I love the smell of clean clothes, fresh towels and I love having a counter clear of clutter.
I love this. I love picking up after my daughter who leaves her clothing lying on the ground after furiously pulling out all the possible outfits in the morning and finding socks under her bed, under her carpet, strewn on a jewelry box. I love re-hanging all her shirts and and re-folding all her pants and re-pairing all her clean socks. I love making her bed, making it just the way she likes, the top folded down so that the covers don’t ride up too high onto her face while she tries to fall asleep. I love picking up hundreds of tiny elastics from her Rainbow Loom set that her brother or the cat stuff in their mouths and putting them all in an old baby bottle tightly sealed and out of harms way. I love finding markers and crayons absolutely everywhere and placing them in the garbage so that one day we will have to start fresh again and buy a full set and begin all over again. I love that we can argue about cleanliness, about responsibility and about learning to keep things organized. I love that we have come so far.
I love paying off debt. I love paying it off because all my demons and all my bad habits have a huge party in my head and try to get me to do things like buy new boots and new sheets and a new watch and they throw things at me like ‘you’re so irresponsible’ and ‘you’ll never amount to anything’, and I ruin their fun by kicking them out of my head and all of a sudden it’s quiet and I’m left sitting with myself. I love it because sitting with myself is really hard and it makes me eat a lot of chocolate and I evaluate every square inch of my life and I’m a Taurus so I remember everything which means evaluating everything takes a long time, but time is what I have.
I love having a pimple on my neck. I love it. I love it because it makes me feel like 16 years old again and I’m almost about to cover it with make-up and then I remember that I’m not 16 and I have nowhere to be. Fester away.
I love nursing my 16 month old. I love not feeling conflicted about nursing past a year, and I love how surprisingly loving it is. I love that my son is old enough to know when something funny is happening and can laugh while at my breast and we giggle together. I love that he is aware of what he needs and can point, hop or clap for it. I love what he needs is something physically provided by me, and will wait if I’m busy, or will laugh his way to the sweet spot if he gets it right away. I love that I think by nursing him longer, he is learning more about sharing than he would if he was sent into a playground and told to share all his toys. I love that I watch him restrain himself when he gets very excited and has to remember not to get so excited that he accidentally bites, and I think he is learning about self regulation and having respect for others regardless of his own feelings.
I love not having everything I think I want right now. I love watching my jealousies and insecurities battle it out and I love knowing that so much of what I want has nothing to do with me but has more to do with all of you and how I want you to see me. I love removing that hold over myself, and seeing that I make things very complicated by hosting a civil war. I love the image of myself at war with myself and then I can see how wasteful it is and I choose wholeness for a moment and I think to myself “I’m going to live from this place more often” and the moment passes and I watch myself get split down the center again, but it’s okay because over time wholeness will last longer than a moment and there will be less inner conflict.
I love winter. I love it. When temperatures drop to -30 and I have to bundle the baby up and push the stroller through snow because the city hasn’t cleared the sidewalks, I remember how much I love it. I love when my lungs ache and the cold triggers my asthma and I feel out of shape and embarrassed that I’m not tougher, I remember that I’m tough in a different way. I love when strangers don’t move over for me and the kids but instead plough straight into us and I’m forced to move to the side because I take the opportunity to explain to my kids that that is the perfect example of how not to be. I love getting inside and the mad dash of removing outter wear and the snow on the stroller melts into salt puddles and kids are crying and cold and look to me to take off mitts and boots and I’m cold too but I remember how much I love the feeling of sitting on the couch with a cup of tea and seeing my kids faces bright red with cold and they look healthy and happy and I love that.
I love it.