Sweet Swim

I was so hot, I couldn’t help myself. I jumped right into that river, clothes and all. And oh, it felt so good!

I had been sitting on our dock, the hot sunlight prickling my skin in the way it only does in summertime. Going all the way up the hill to the house to get my bathing suit seemed like too much trouble.

I didn’t care what anyone thought. All I knew was that getting wet in that exact moment was just the thing my soul wanted me to do.

The minute I hit the water, all tension, wondering, thinking, contemplating, ruminating, worrying and anything else in my mind instantly dissolved. I was on vacation.

I swam against the current, giving my inner child the playful goal of making it to the next dock. I dove for the rocky, slimy bottom. A momentary thought of the catfish I had just seen nibbling on the weeds below crossed my mind, then passed. I kicked, paddled, laughed, played, did all I could to make it to my goal.

When I finally got to my child-play destination, I closed my eyes, turned on my back, and totally and completely let go. I floated on top of that river, letting her take me downstream, to wherever she wanted me to go.

There was something so cathartic about that swim. Like life flashes before one’s eyes in the moment of death, as I swam against the river’s current, every other goal I had worked so hard for flashed before mine. I became instantly connected to what it feels like to work so hard for something and how wonderful it is to get there and finally let go.

As I at last placed my feet down in the soft silt of the river bed, and prepared to haul my dripping, clothes-covered body from the water, for the first time in my life, I felt really wealthy. The wealth I felt had absolutely nothing to do with possessions or where I lived. It had to do with something deeper—a gracious gratitude for the river who let me be carried by her, gratitude that I had given myself gift of going for that swim, and gratefulness that so often, moments in life that feel like swimming against the tide are, oh, so sweet at the end.

Company's Coming

Company’s coming tomorrow. When the invitation was extended, I felt—while not anything close to perfect—“almost in control.”

I started planning early. The house was clean on Wednesday.

“I can keep it this way ‘til Sunday,” I thought.

I planned the menu. “No big deal,” I said.

Then a baby food jar shattered on the clean kitchen floor.

Cheerios exploded everywhere in our bedroom.

Laundry piled up after a very long week.

My son suddenly decided to deem sleep extinct like the dinosaurs—for us and him.

What felt “almost in control” on Wednesday has become like a car on the world’s fastest roller coaster, no strings attached.

Call it resignation. Call it relaxation. Call it beaten into submission.

Thanks to a gentle exhaustion from swimming against the current for far too long and the great honor of being a parent, I am now shifting into a general acceptance that things don’t always go as planned. That’s just the way it is. The only way to live is the way we truly are in each moment.

Who knows what way I (and our home) will be tomorrow when the doorbell rings, but that is just the way we will be.

And that will not only be good enough, it will be perfect.

Sleepless Nights

I knew it was bad when I started banging into walls.

Then there was the time I woke up in bed convinced I was still in the rocking chair, my son in my arms.

“How many times did he wake up last night?” I asked my husband this morning, in a fog.

“Sweets, you were up with him all night!” he replied.

And so, here we are this morning, my son having recovered from his teething pains or illness, whichever it was. Thankfully, the only evidence of the night we shared is the cranky edge to us all.

It’s no wonder, then, that I almost burst out laughing this afternoon when a family member, unaware of how little sleep I’d gotten as of late, said I looked like I was doing really good.

The funny thing about their statement was that in the moment they said it, it was true! I don’t know how it happened, but as they spoke the words, I realized I was feeling centered, peaceful and as if all was well in my world.

Funny because if you had seen me a few hours before, well, that’s about the last way I would have described “my world." Not only had the night not gone as “planned,” the whole day had gone that way too.

In fact, everything was so entirely off-course from the way I would have planned it had I been in charge (which thankfully I’m not), at some point when I was probably too tired to notice, I must have slipped from resistance to acceptance to—lo and behold—peace!

Sometimes the most difficult nights are the ones that make us realize everything's all right.

Geese At Sunset

Every night they float by—nine little goslings and six geese. I think they’re three families, although I can’t be sure.

I stand on the riverbank watching the sun, in whatever version of glory it's chosen for the night, sink beneath the surface. Then as if by magic, I see them appear.

At first they happen on the surface of the water like dots. Then as the current pulls them closer, it's as if I’ve become privy to a family happily on a picnic, oblivious to those watching as they chat amongst themselves.

I stand there, trying to tell who belongs to whom. I think they are a family of eight, another of four, and another with an only child. But just when I think I’ve figured it all out, they shift positions--adults chatting amongst themselves, somehow keeping track of the little ones twirling and circling about in the current.

What I like most about when I see them is watching the little ones trying to keep up. They kick and swim with all their might, then suddenly an unexpected current or downspout in the water crops up, and they’re off!

Sometimes I feel like those goslings. Just when I think I’ve got everything arranged just right to go forward, some big current scoops me up and whisks me away, far enough from where I thought I was "supposed" to be to make life adventurous.