The Gift of an Ordinary Day

I’m on an airplane right now flying to the west, and I’m reveling in the luxury of sitting alone, reading a book.

This book, The Gift of an Ordinary Day by Katrina Kenison is so good that I have to share it right *now* even though it means thumb-typing this post on my phone.

I may not have mentioned it recently, but these last couple weeks, my kids have been driving me crazy. Sylvia has been sick and has been throwing A LOT of tantrums. Andrew and I spent a couple days last week in an embroiled battle of wills. The house has gotten too messy, the weather has been cold, and there were a couple afternoons that I was ready to throw in the towel. Except that when your job is Mom, it’s not clear how to announce that you’re giving notice.

Of course, in and amidst the crying and the disobedience and the mess, there were lovely times. And even more fortunately, I have a strong amnesia about hard times, so next week I’ll probably only have a vague sense that things were anything but grand.

So here I sit on an airplane with a book I picked up at the library last night. Katrina Kennison’s book Mitten Strings for God is about my favorite parenting books ever. Her writing is like a balm for my mommy soul. The book currently on my lap is The Gift of an Ordinary Day, and it’s about her experiences shifting from being a parent of little kids to being the parent of teens.

I’m not a big crier, but I’ve sat here on the plane, sobbing over several paragraphs. Her first book was all about slowing down and soaking up the pleasures of everyday life with our kids. This book is about searching and changing and letting go as her little boys grow into teenagers and men.

Here are a few of the passages that cracked open my heart:
About looking back at parenting small kids:
“I learned a lot about myself, and many lessons in mindfulness, during those long days. Intense and demanding as they are, the years we spend with our young children can also be deeply, viscerally gratifying. We know exactly where we are needed and what we need to be doing. Immersed in the physical and emotional realm of parenthood. We develop reserves of patience, imagination, and fortitude we never dreamed possible. At times, the hard work of being a mother seems in itself a spiritual practice, an opportunity for growth and self-exploration in an extraordinarily intimate world, a world in which hands are for holding, bodies for snuggling, laps for sitting.”
She goes on to talk about how her boys have grown up, and the oldest is in eighth grade…
“Sensing the ground shifting beneath my feet, I resisted this new, unknown territory, already nostalgic for what I’d so recently taken for granted. I missed my old world and it’s funny inhabitants, those great big personalities still housed in small, sweet bodies. I missed my sons, kissable cheeks and round bellies, their unanswerable questions, their innocent faith, their sudden tears and wild, infectious giggles, even the smell of their morning breath as they would leap, upon waking, from their own warm beds directly into ours. I missed the person I has been for them too–the younger, more capable mother who read aloud for hours, stuck raisin eyes into bear-shaped pancakes, created knight’s armor from cardboard and duct tape. Certainly my talents didn’t seem quite so impressive anymore, my company not as desirable as it once had been.”

This chapter in her book is about change, and she goes on:

“Change, it is said, goes hand in hand with opportunity. Growing older, I begin to see that finding fulfillment in this next stage of life will demand a kind of surrender that seems beyond me now, a new way of being and caring that I can barely begin to imagine. I suspect I have a lot to learn about letting go.
“I recall my younger, intensely ambitious self with a wince–how avidly I set my sights on the future and how hard I worked at becoming the person I thought I ought to be, in pursuit of the life by which I thought I could define myself. So many aspirations–for a rewarding career, security for my family, success for my children, a marriage that worked, and a life that mattered. I wanted it all. And I believed that if I nurtured those dreams, and planned well enough, they would one day come true. The funny thing is, now, as my children begin to pull away, it is the present moment that concerns me most. Yet try as I might to pay attention, I find myself confronted with all sorts of conflicting emotions–pride in my sons, of course, and gratitude for what we’ve had, but also an almost heartbreaking sense of just how short life really is, and how incomprehensible. How in fact life is not all about planning and shaping, but about not knowing, and being okay with that. It’s about learning to take the moment that comes and make the best of it, without any idea of what’s going to happen next.”

Ahhh good stuff. I’m so glad that this nook found its way to my lap!

Now I’m going to sign off, keep reading, and enjoy a three day weekend with some wonderful friends.
Lovingly,
Althea