I subscribe to a lot of blogs, and I pop onto facebook regularly. Everybody is posting goals and plans for next year. Not me.
My chair welcomes me and so does my cup of tea. A bag of Hershey’s Special Dark Kisses, courtesy of those who know how to give a good Christmas gift, joins me. While everyone else is making lists and dreaming big dreams I sit and sip.
I think to myself, “Dang girl, you made it another year.”
A small smile turns up the corners of my lips. I am inordinately pleased.
I try to assemble a list, The Year in Review, maybe. But instead I find myself watching my daughter sleep. A pang strikes me because she is changing so quickly and no longer the familiar girl child of yesterday.
I understand, for the first time, what the word metamorphosis truly means.
When I see one of my young men sleeping or joyful or deeply wounded, the little boy trying to hide behind the mask of manhood is plain to me. But this sleeping lass is another breed entirely. She has entered into her becoming.
The shape of her spirit has changed her form. Her bones have grown into the promise and soon the flurry of short days will pass. Another will watch her, their own wild heart whispering “Mine” with every beat.
My chin sets firm. She was still mine first. No one will ever take the scars tracked across my flesh and soul for love of her. In the face of her sleeping strength my grip loosens a little.
My words poke her, telling her to get up and she moans, resisting. I do not relent and she sits up in the bed. The little girl is there again, in her frown.
I should not eat chocolate so early, but I have another.
I call my husband. The phone is crackly, muffled sounding. I knew it would be. Something is wrong with it and has been for a week or more. I could have texted, but I snapped at him on his way out the door. Neither of us mentions that. Instead I say, “Got there ok?” and we talk, mostly saying, “What? What? I can’t hear you,” before we tell each other goodbye.
Wash needs to be done. Wash always needs to be done, like most things I do. Years of being caregiver stretch before and behind.
The middle boy comes in. He worked all night. We talk of movies and books, because it is too early for me to contemplate world events. Instead we discuss plot structures and great moral dilemmas. I shoo him out the door, telling him to go get some sleep.
I need to check on the eldest. Stress stalks him today. Authority comes harder to some than others, and it is not a comfortable coat for him to wear. I hope his new employee is kind to him. Maybe notes from mom are not as important as I like to think, but I send an email anyway.
With those things done, I cast my mind back over 2013 but nothing momentous and worthy of prose leaps to mind.
I unwrap another kiss and pop it into my mouth, letting it rest there, melting on my tongue.
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