fleeting

I have two gorgeous Peony bushes in my yard. Every year I see their sticky buds start to emerge, ants scurrying across the globed surface, I get excited. I know that means that within a week or two they will burst open into big mop-headed blooms, the perfect shade of pale pink, and more beautiful than any rose. I like to cut big vasefuls of them, mix them with the purple-blue Delphinium, lavender, and blades of ornamental grass also growing around my yard. They make lovely early summer bouquets.

But this year was different.

This year, I kept telling myself to go cut some peonies (pull out of the garage), go cut some peonies (pull into the garage just in time to pick someone or something up and pull out again), go cut some peonies (as I mow by them with the lawnmower), go cut some peonies (as I wake up in the middle of the night).

By the time I actually had a spare moment and got out to my scissors to go cut some....they were gone. Not gone as in disappeared, but faded from pink to bleached white, heads drooping, petals flaking off, and their centers booby trapped with earwigs. Nearly gone.


I missed Peony season.... :(

And I couldn't help but relate it to a dream I had about a month ago, where my little J (just turned 5) was standing in the middle of a field. I ran towards him, a huge smile on my face, my fingers outstretched to tickle him. He was supposed to squeal with delight and run away from me--just like he always did. Only he didn't. He stood his ground. He looked at me with unamused eyes and a serious face. "I'm too old for that now, Mom," he said.

Oh! and how my heart broke to realize I'd somehow missed "kid season."

It was a lot of work for me to be a stay at home mom. It took a lot of time and energy and creative planning to keep them fed right, think up crafts and educational activities, homeschool, keep a balance between work time and play time and service time, indoor and outdoor time, too. Now...mothering is still in the forefront, closest to my heart, but has to be "squeezed in" between one of my 5 jobs that pays me, which we need. At any one time, my mind has to be 'ruminating' on an angle for an article I'm writing, marketing strategies, wedding decorations, paint colors, effective social media interaction for nonprofits, customer acquisition approaches, plot and character development. And for as hard as I try to keep mothering to the best of my ability, I realize I'm operating on the bare minimum here. It's a thing, like so many things, I've had to compact and shove into an already packed metaphorical closet.

I'm worried, despite all my best efforts, that it's going to take its toll on my boy squad. My precious, resilient, self-entertaining, practically angelic boy squad. Might they, too, reach their limits of what they can endure before giving up or giving in? Sigh.

At least I grasp the concept of  how fleeting their youth is. At least I've let things I used to think were so important (scrubbing the baseboards, twice daily vacuuming, pilates) go in order to give them more time. I forcefully clear my head and put down all other distractions when I'm with my kids. I make sure I LOOK at them every day. Listen to them. Engage in some way. We still do dinner together, prayers, scripture study, weekly family night, pancakes after church most Sundays. It feels woefully inadequate...but it's what I can do for now until I can figure out how to do more.

Oh, and tickle chasing. I do a lot of tickle chasing. And guess what? When I go at them with my big smile, and my wiggling fingers, yelling "RAWR!", they run and laugh. All of them. Even my 13 year old. I think we still have some time :)