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Be Patient

Posted on April 26, 2010

Sometimes it is spoken in a whisper, other times it’s a bark, this, “Be patient” seems to be an inevitable refrain in parenting. And, as it turns out, in life. I try to keep the burn from showing in my cheeks as I bite back yet another, “But I don’t want to wait.” I am unapologetically tired of waiting. Waiting to have time, waiting to know, waiting to have the footing I sense is out there, but just beyond where I am. I want now to be the now that delivers me to what we’ve been working toward. If I were parenting me I’d say, “It’s this time right now—these nights of going to bed dreaming about it, followed by the mornings waking up…

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Categories: Love

Catch it to you

Posted on April 23, 2010

I gave the girls a bath tonight, partly because they were in need and partly because before long they won’t all fit. I love watching the three of them, elbows and knees pointing this way and that, shoulders plastered with slick, wet hair and knotty spines twisting and bending. Their eyes take me back to early day cuddles, hours spent holding them on my knees and learning the contours of their faces, little maps of a future I couldn’t possibly know. Now, watching their long necks, there is no cradling, they can hold themselves up and toss out a steady hand when they start to slip. They do things like hold dolls under a stream of water and say, “With this ring thee be…

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Categories: Mama Sap

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Love Letters

Posted on April 16, 2010

I found the slip of recycled paper, with its pale pink and blue lines, lines that are intended to help keep the letters in alignment. We’d practiced at the dining room table, where she taught me that “dirt letters” are the ones that dip below the lines and that to get the spacing right “ya just put a finger in there.” That paper always gets me, undeniably marking a passage I did not witness.

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Categories: Random

Baby’s got my back

Posted on April 11, 2010

We are a pretty touchy feely family— lot’s of hugs, hand holding and bedtime back rubs. We have little things we do to lay claim to one another by reinforcing how well we know one another. It is something that I cherish and can draw a straight line to from a conversation Sean and I once had in the kitchen. I was heavily pregnant with Briar and I was passionately talking about all the things I wanted for our family, “I want our children to see us love. I want to hold hands and kiss. I want to be a family that welcomes love and lives it every day.” He nodded, smiled and tenderly kissed me over my belly. The other morning I was…

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Categories: Me

Intentions

Posted on April 9, 2010

I never imagined that I would do things perfectly, shoot, I based the beginning of a novel on how very not perfect I was. I did imagine that I would do things with intent, that I would always have the presence of mind to choose one way over another. I swore back when we first had Briar that I would forgive myself not being a scrapbooker, that I would commemorate things in my own way and, one that would not trip me up with requirements of ribbons or rubber glue. (I also swore that I would never…well, let’s just say doing is a lot different than planning, isn’t it?)

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Categories: Mama Sap