Gift horses

     Today, I have been given three beaded bracelets, one picture of a rainbow, help with moving heavy furniture from small hands and a copy of a New Year’s poem written by an eight year old where “future” is spelled “fucher,” (go ahead and try; it defies any non-expletive pronunciation.) I count these gifts and wonder how, at the end of the day, I could feel so tired, push so hard for bedtime to happen quickly, read one less book than requested and feel myself being spread so thin, stretched to the point of breaking.  How could I feel so relieved at being able to get on pinterest for a few minutes without someone needing a snack, needing to get wiped; needing, really, a small piece of me.

     Today, I have not been given more hours in a day than yesterday, more mental and physical energy or less on my to-do list. In this wonderful thing I like to call semi-large family living, I don’t think those things will be given to me any time soon. However, where I put that energy and how I spend those hours is up to me, every day. I can choose to listen to a seemingly endless but clearly important diatribe on eleven year old relationships, I can choose to sit in wonder at our poet-in-resident and her capacity for expressing emotions, I can choose to throw snowballs at their fort walls, and sometimes, I can and do choose to organize that shelf that has been irritating me forever, or read the new National Geographic for ten minutes with the door closed.

     In the last few days, my oldest has been watching home videos. In one of them, my now five year old was not quite 3. She was sitting on the floor of her room playing with a toy cell phone and putting her baby in a basket. Her hair was almost non-existent and she was lost in her imaginary world. I’m so glad I took the time to capture that moment, because that little girl has changed so much as to be almost unrecognizable in two years. I had almost forgotten those quiet times on the floor and the sound of her voice, so soft and malleable. I have read heartwrenching quotes about how quickly children grow since my oldest was a newborn, but there is nothing like the passage of time in your childrens' faces that will make you feel it in every inch of your being.  In addition to my much more practical and mundane resolutions at the start of this year, I have made another, more important one. I will not look a gift horse in the mouth, especially when those horses come bearing gifts they have made with their hands and hearts, because I am still, to them, their favorite person. I will still organize shelves and I will still have to clean the living room, but I will make sure I look in their eyes and accept what they give with love, because that is the spirit in which they were given.