Morning Musings

This morning I sat rocking and nursing the baby, wondering how much longer I would get these moments of closeness and relative quiet. It's a bittersweet time, when your child begins to transition from baby to toddler. Although only eight months, this little one is endlessly driven to be vertical and to walk. Already he refuses to nurse more and more each day, frustrated by the lack of view that it subjects him to, and the fact that he has to be relatively still. It probably hurts him a little with his top teeth coming in too. He now prefers the endless variety of new tastes, textures, and smells of "big people food." Besides, he can munch on a bit of something AND scurry around at the same time! Of course he is making up for his limited daily nursing by nursing much more at night. This is frustrating and exhausting, but knowing that all too soon this phase of his life will be gone and I'll miss his little baby self gets me through these over-tired, sleep-deprived days.

Anyway, as I sat thinking such thoughts, I noticed a large hawk sitting on the newly dead tulip poplar across the upper hay field. The sun was shining brightly, just peeking over the tree line, illuminating the light feathers of its breast and under-wings when it moved. I'm sure that's why it had chosen that particular spot to preen in. It went about his business seemingly oblivious of the smaller birds who, making their normal morning rounds, flew up to the tree intending to land, only to suddenly veer sharply away when they sighted the bird of prey. I wondered if it was the hawk who watched me empty the dryer, if it was the hawk who my preschooler thought was an owl when he spied it on the board fence one day, or the hawk who hunted the crow that early, gray morning way back when. Whatever the case, it was not hunting, just regally soaking up the sun.

Throughout the morning, the frost slowly receded across the hay, melting as it's protective shadows disappeared with the climbing sun. Through the screen porch door off of the laundry room, I saw the hawk as I switched loads. I noticed it out the kitchen window as I filled the teapot. I looked for it through the dining room window when I cleared off the breakfast things. I glanced at it when I stood in the stone room next to my oldest son, after discussing the schoolwork for the day. Surprisingly, the hawk remained on the same branch, sunning himself for over an hour. (It was 29 degrees Fahrenheit outside after all!) And when I began to take for granted that it would be there, it was gone.

Such is life. On days when all of my strength is sapped from wrestling with the baby, walking him around, catching him as he falls, holding him on my hip and keeping him away from the stove with one arm while I cook with the other, etc., washing endless loads of dishes, laundry and diapers for a family of seven... during my evenings when I stay up until the middle of then night in order to clean up from the daily bomb and to prepare for the next day... at night when I spend more time in the rocking chair than in my bed... every morning when I wake up feeling worse than I felt when I laid down the night before, when I scrape myself out of bed wincing in pain and stumble to the door of my room, I remember that my birds will soon be gone too. Or maybe it will be me that will be gone. Maybe I'll be a "looney bird." In any case, my poorly made point is that this phase is just that, a phase. Soon this sunlit "hour" of my life will be over. The baby will walk. The kids will be grown and leave the nest one by one...

In the mean time, I hope to bask in the little moments of sunshine when the warm and fuzzy-headed baby nestles close in my arms (even if it is three in the morning), when the preschooler nearly bowls me over with an unasked for hug (despite the the fact that he leaves a peanut butter smear on my shirt and makes me spill my drink), when the kindergartener reads her first "big kid book" and looks up at me with pride (and the remains of frustrated tears in her eyes), when that huge grin spreads on the face of my fourth grader upon learning that she got a part in a musical that requires her to be on stage for every act (as well as her attendance at long, disorganized rehearsals at inconvenient times), when my freshman in high school proudly shows off his latest computer program (that he ignored his other tasks and his family for in order to create.) Life is short and bittersweet, and I want to savor it all. I don't want to take one minute of it for granted.