Linking up with Heading Home today for Five Minute Friday.

Today’s word is:

I see you, momma with your jammies on and crooked glasses and hair in an even more crooked ponytail. I see you. You’re talking to your younger son who is pulling on your sleeve, trying to show you his ouchie, and your daughter is shouting and running ahead because it is COLD, and you, I notice, have no coat. Just a hoodie two sizes too small. The hoodie, it looks like, also is a bed for something furry. Very furry.

On the other hand, or paw, your kids have coats and hats and gloves and scarves and backpacks and lunchboxes, and just all of it is so MUCH for three little kids.

I see you. I see that you look pale and I wonder what you had for breakfast and if it was a big hot plate of nothing like me, and maybe later around eleven or so you will have time to stop and stand over your sink and drink some coffee that hasn’t been microwaved three times already. You will stare out the window to the cold and a leaf swirling yard and just breathe for a minute.

This morning we all smushed into the car with all our hats and gloves and scarves and lunches and coats and squirming, and we attempted to leave for school three times before we actually succeeded. Each time, I would start the car, and we would shout, “And AWAY WE GOOOO!” and then I would see that our beloved cat got out. Or that we left a library book inside. Or that I forgot my glasses and great glaucoma we can’t have that. I might drive into a tree.

And away we go. After three attempts and some fussing about lunch boxes being filled with oranges because”I don’t LIKE oranges, mom! Canna I have pudding? Please?” and a quick discussion of scurvy pirates and how oranges keep us from being them, and then realizing my argument was all wrong because the boys are all ABOUT scurvy pirates, we finally left and drove the three whole blocks to get to the school.  I sat in the drop off line longer than it would have taken to just walk.

And then I came home and washed up, cleaned, wiped, rinsed, fixed and folded for a few minutes before I had time to even realize my coffee was in the microwave again – somehow it had traveled there, like it had missed its home or something.

Oh, and I read the bible. Did I mention that? It was Psalms. It was about praising the Lord, but honestly I don’t remember much else, just the praising part because I didn’t get much sleep last night, so I slapped “snooze” one too many times, and then my reading felt rushed. I am sorry, Lord. I should have… oh, many things,  I know.

I should have: gotten up earlier, read and prayed for a long time, had spiritual insight, prayed for peace for all mankind, contemplated Your goodness, spoke quietly and melodically to my children, kept my sense of humor.

But all I could do instead was get breakfast on the table and get to school and rescue the cat from the Polar Vortex.

That last one was debatable for a minute. In my opinion, Steve McQueen the Escape Cat might just deserve a dose of Polar Vortex this morning, but the big brown eyes and furrowed toddler brows in the back seat said “No. Way.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So. Now, I am at the library. I have coffee and a to-do list as long as Oklahoma is wide, and I don’t care. It’s quiet. My coffee is hot, all on its own. And I want to write.

I am going to make sure and smile at the jammies lady next time I see her. And we will smile at each other even as our own Toddler Vortex is swirling around us.

We are still here.

Thank You, sweet Jesus, for brief, brilliant stillness.

If it was all day I would long for crazy.