(2018)
Today was Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s Day. It was a rough
morning by middle-class, first-world mom standards: my one-year-old could not
be satisfied and screamed at me all day. There was no sun out. It was pure gloom, and none of my
friends were free.
When my husband got home, we were supposed to go to Ash Wednesday Mass. We sat down to a meatless dinner, but my son, Myles, decided he wasn’t ready to eat and (as expected) started screaming, so we just let him go play. We then realized that we'd missed the Mass in English, and the later one would be in Spanish.
So, after deliberation, we stayed. Home. We decided Myles didn’t need an evening of us shushing him in the back pew. He needed a night with our love-struck attention on him. Once we decided this, I did what I knew to do: I put on a Disney playlist. Myles immediately came prancing back in from the playroom, arms held up to ask his daddy for a dance.
When my husband got home, we were supposed to go to Ash Wednesday Mass. We sat down to a meatless dinner, but my son, Myles, decided he wasn’t ready to eat and (as expected) started screaming, so we just let him go play. We then realized that we'd missed the Mass in English, and the later one would be in Spanish.
So, after deliberation, we stayed. Home. We decided Myles didn’t need an evening of us shushing him in the back pew. He needed a night with our love-struck attention on him. Once we decided this, I did what I knew to do: I put on a Disney playlist. Myles immediately came prancing back in from the playroom, arms held up to ask his daddy for a dance.
Maybe some nights, the best way to be reminded of our
mortality is to dance in these bodies that contain our hearts that are turning
to ash every second, and these heaving lungs. To embrace our husbands, our sons, our moms or great-grandmothers, whoever is right next to us, and to see them as whole people
in the moment, to let go of ourselves completely in the moment-- this is one way to
embrace mortality. Just love what’s in front of you.
Thirty weeks pregnant with our second son on this very day, and I jigged around the kitchen, feeling like Santa Clause. I hope, when you were coming home from church tonight, you saw us through our little kitchen window—the four of us moving to fast-paced rhythms in shakes, shimmies and shuffles. I hope you heard Myles laughing and squealing (a sound as good as a brook over rocks), after a day of heartache and toothaches, at his daddy’s outrageous movements. And I hope you saw as my husband put on a Beauty and the Beast ballad, shut off the lights, and took me in for a slow dance. I choked back tears. We have come through a lot in only 2 ½ years of marriage. When we first got married, I was naïve-- totally in love, without experience of trial. Now, I am totally in love but in a different way, knowing the reality of sorrow after miscarrying a baby, the reality of sticking together when we don’t feel like dancing, when death enters and takes what’s most precious.
Thirty weeks pregnant with our second son on this very day, and I jigged around the kitchen, feeling like Santa Clause. I hope, when you were coming home from church tonight, you saw us through our little kitchen window—the four of us moving to fast-paced rhythms in shakes, shimmies and shuffles. I hope you heard Myles laughing and squealing (a sound as good as a brook over rocks), after a day of heartache and toothaches, at his daddy’s outrageous movements. And I hope you saw as my husband put on a Beauty and the Beast ballad, shut off the lights, and took me in for a slow dance. I choked back tears. We have come through a lot in only 2 ½ years of marriage. When we first got married, I was naïve-- totally in love, without experience of trial. Now, I am totally in love but in a different way, knowing the reality of sorrow after miscarrying a baby, the reality of sticking together when we don’t feel like dancing, when death enters and takes what’s most precious.
My husband glowed in the lone light of the kitchen window, looking
at me with kind brown eyes like spoons of tea. My son,
knowing only what’s in front of him—eternity—came up and once again asked to be taken in his daddy’s arms. I hope you
saw us there, me and my three boys, the littlest in my belly, big brother
tucked into his daddy’s shoulder, swaying back and forth, dancing the oldest
dance there is: love.
Later, after bedtime stories and prayers, and a tucking in
with a Peter Rabbit blanket, my husband asked me if I had heard the news. I
hadn’t. Another school shooting, he
said, and we hung our heads. On this same day, there are parents mourning their
high school children, a community wailing at the riot of death.
We skipped Ash Wednesday, and I am glad. I am glad we were silly
and wild for an evening, and held each other.
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