all the time is here

I wake up thinking about another creative endeavor. I think this makes 5 Big Things I dream to do in the world. Number one is mothering, creating humans that live like this. Then the others, they are all of the other artist parts of me, reaching out and begging to explore the story of this life. I wake up with that new idea and then I feel the tap tap tap of the start to the day and I’m on my feet with breakfast and answering questions and rubbing away the sleep from all of our eyes.

I’m reaching all around.

We talk about finding balance and she has none and neither do I. We talk about accepting that in motherhood and then I think it’s impossible to accept that all at once. The only way to do acceptance is in moments. The balance is not in the big picture. It is in small doses, sometimes on all different days that are too spread apart. The balance is only in those moments that I wake up to see are moments. They all are. Moments of chances to accept things just as they are, stopping time for a flash instead of being yanked ahead by its unrelenting grip.

Stopping time when all around is light and good and when it’s chaotic and hard too. Stopping to know that both are now so they must serve us all because that’s the thing about now, it is meant.

There are brain files I keep flipping through and it’s like there are two different cabinets, one for my family and home and one for my work and dreams that are set apart, my own types of things.

Both of them are full, these cabinets, and sometimes it feels like I’m only flipping through without ever pulling anything out. thwap thwap thwap, my finger pushing tabs, fast fast fast, just skimming and spinning my wheels. Or maybe it’s like pulling out a random folder only to set it down again while the other cabinet starts dancing around, clanging and banging, demanding.  Like how the mornings start.

It takes a deep breath and a digging deep for the acceptance amidst the clamoring and the mess. The dryer lint and fingerprints are attaching themselves to everything, the sides and the handles and the grind of life. They are here with the loud and the other many messes and it is all keeping me only stuck if I’m unaccepting.

I can only live in the moment and then accept the moment as it is if I can breathe deep the now and sometimes I can’t. I have to accept even that. Because with the messes, there is crying and owies and sibling rivalry to pull the moment’s rug from under me. The thing is, it is this knocking down that keeps me grounded.

He says, All you have to give right now is right here. He points at our children and up around our house and it’s true, all the time is here. He says that not because he thinks this is a woman’s place but because we are in the new baby and two other young children part and it is the physically unable to have any hands for anything else part.  I answer, I love that. I want to be right here.  (And yet I want to have one hand poised to pull out a drawer on the other cabinet.)

Acceptance is that it may stay this way for a long while, my hand toward things that spring forth from the other cabinet while the other hand is still happy juggling the story of our family.  I am poised like when you point at something and then forget to put your hand down, to rest it a while. It is suspended in space because it has learned to want to be there.

I am one hand reaching and then the other hand reaching, all the time. I am imbalanced in every now, until I let go and accept the crooked, slanted and reaching parts, all the parts.

If my creative soul did not cry out, I would feel less of this angst. And that is a silence I would never want.  I am this person, created for mothering and art. Two hands reaching and bringing it together, sometimes in moments spread far apart and even accepted for the blink of an eye that both parts will always be.

The boys are in the backyard. They say, bring more mud over here and their clothes are strewn about. Their sister is starting to raise her voice for food from the chair next to me. I take it all in even as I write this. In this moment like all the others, there is beauty all around.