moving rocks

I took Miles to kindergarten registration a couple of days ago. I felt uneasy the whole time, like I was in a building that was far too big for my child. That’s because everything in me just wants to keep him home with me forever.  Even if the daily grind of at-home momming is hard so much of the time. Even thought it is, I just really want to tuck them under my wing, secure and warm, always.

Of course, it’s not always that peaceful under my wing. I have a tendency to ruffle and fuss as much as any mother, but even so, I’d like to think that my nest is the best place in the world for my babies.

These boys (who aren’t actually even babies at all anymore) are always just going ahead with all of this growing and changing. Their humor grows with their vocabularies and their long legs. They are these little people with all kinds of opinions and traits and angles to who they are.

I’m crazy about them.

Last night Ryan and I took Asher for a long walk on the first perfectly beautiful spring evening after this very long winter. Miles was over at Nanny and Bapa’s house for a sleep-over because we’re leaving very early today to take Asher to see Dr. P., his Neurosurgeon. So there we were, just the three of us, and we missed our Miles.  At the same time, Ryan and I got to focus a little more closely on Asher, the way he says and does things, the way he always always makes us laugh.

For instance, as we walked, he would stop and move rocks from his path, rocks that were “in mine way.”  Little ones and big ones, round ones and mishapen ones…all the rocks. He’d take his little hand while bending down to the street and move the rocks just a few inches from where they were, so as not to step on them.  So we stopped and started, stopped and started, over and over again.

I had to laugh a little to myself, while I felt the weight of stopping and starting as well as the weight of my ever-growing pregnant belly.  I had to bend down and put my hands on my knees to stretch my aching back a few times.  I had to stop and recognize that the way Asher does things is just plain inspiring.  People always say there’s something special they just can’t quite name about him and I know it too.  He’s gone through a lot for a little guy and as he moved the rocks I thought about how he was choosing to do something about what was in his way rather than simply walking around the obstacles.

This is just how he handles the world, how he handles life. Head on. Plowing through, doing what he has to do to take care of business, so to speak.

So we’ll take him to the doctor today because that’s what we do.  We watch him get MRIs and we talk to Neurologists and those are just the rocks we have to move.  And then his big brother is going to go to school in the fall and no matter how much I want to just walk around the hard parts of parenting, we’re going to go through it and then we’re going to be okay, even if at first we’re not. We do a lot of stopping and starting in many ways and we always will. Sometimes these rocks are going to seem more like boulders or even mountains, but we just need to move them, go through whatever it is we’re going through, instead of around. That’s what I got to thinking about while watching Asher anyway.

But I’m still going to tuck them under my wing as often as I can.