To Witness Becoming

It’s 9pm and if it was December, I’d already be in bed. But it’s July so I am just coming in from pulling weeds in the garden. Rightly so. I get teased about my early winter bedtime, but live by the sun, I say. And it’s easier to do the hard work the garden is begging me to do once the sun has gone down on these mid-July days. I come inside and my hands are a mix of dirt and stickiness. I think of my friend who sent over the Margaret Atwood quote, “In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.” I take her at her word and usually do.

I haven’t written for a moment, and I ask your forgiveness. There is something about the summer that lacks all manners and propriety of a schedule of any kind, it would seem. No start or finish time set in stone, just the list of chores and business work that needs to be tended to and then it’s all of the things in between. I tend to lose sight of things in the summer and I think that is maybe part of the messy joy of it. I am a child again in some ways on these hot days. I saw a young girl, maybe five years old, wearing a jumper that had ties for straps and shorts, all one piece like I wore when I was her age. I saw her and immediately wished they made it in my size.

It was our final 4H fair this last week, our youngest graduating. She showed two chickens and one duck, with the duck winning Grand Champion. A lovely way to end her animal-showing career. Besides the purple ribbon, she also brought home a fairly nasty virus that laid her out for several days and from which now she is just recovering. She spent many days in Joe’s and my bed, it being on the first floor and near the kitchen. Her room is upstairs and removed from the fray of the home and in taking care of her, I kept her in our room for ease and for comfort. “I love your bed, mama,” she would say as I sat on the edge of the bed, gently stroking the hair off her wet forehead. “Your sheets are so soft.” I told her once she was well, we would get the same sheets for her bed. “I’d like that,” she replied. I see the baby still in her and am well aware at the same time, she is a woman of 18.

Maddie is getting ready to move on to Indiana University next month and in doing so, moving to a small, old house south of campus with friends. I am so excited for her and I will miss her daily sightings. I am also fortunate that she is a fifteen-minute drive away. I also savor the possibility that I will be able to tempt her to meet me for lunch, especially if I am buying. I continue to bask in the moments before she goes. The way she scoops up Peaches, our chunky orange cat. When I tell her I am running to the grocery and she says from her room, “Wait! I’m coming.” Even her shoe collection by the front door. She came in late last night. I heard the front door open and close and footsteps making their way to our bedroom. She walked to the edge of the bed, leaned over and kissed me on the cheek, and said, “Good night, mama.”

I have wondered when “mama” will transition to “mom” and it has here and there, but the former continues to hold. I am okay either way, but there is something about the “mama” that pulls on my heart. As I see Maddie walk through the door, as I brush Maia’s hair away from her eyes as she heals, I feel a new gratitude that these are the two humans I have known through every phase of their existence. Not my mother or my husband or my dearest friends - just these two souls. From the initial kick to this moment, it has been these girls and I. The beauty and intimacy of knowing another in this way - a gift.

The days have been hot and the air full of a thickness that only July and August know. As I walked outside this evening, I thought of my next phase of life as well. I looked at the cloud in this sky, knowing it will only be like this for a moment. This heavy-bellied gargantuan, looking so full and heavy it could burst. This moon, refusing to be captured, appropriately so. I imagine them both saying to me, “ Don’t try to capture me. This is not my true form. This is only me for now, but in a moment, I will be something else entirely.”

I sit outside and know it is all temporary. Nothing is with us forever, not even this version of ourselves that are writing and reading this. How wonderful. So I soak this summer up. I eat the ripe peach and let the juice drip down my chin. I sit outside at dark and listen to frogs in the pool. I rise early and drink my coffee and not rush or worry about what woke me in the middle of the night. I will get my hands dirty and walk barefoot and try to breathe in this place, knowing that none of it is ours to hold. Only to love and witness its becoming.