Clutch

Drinking my cocktail at 10 o clock at night because lately, it’s been all I can do to be up at just before 6, walk, change, get everyone ready, get everyone where they need to be. Do all the necessary things that make life keep moving in that not so neat line. And I do those things because it’s a string of love that’s endless. It’s not just something I do, but something I love. But it is tiring and tiresome and some days incredibly unimportant feeling.

And then there are days. Days that make them all melt away. And looking back someday I hope that I remember them as ALL being like this. Every day a clutch point in which life roars into existence. Every single day a miracle. An epiphany. A day unlike any other. Because you know they are, it’s just that we can’t, with our human eyes, see them like that. At least not every day.

Today we had a moment. It was a moment I still don’t want to let go of. So I do my best and I sit here and sip my cocktail and I type because I don’t want to forget. It’s real. As real as her tiny eyelashes. As real as that breathtakingly beautiful sense of worry and sadness that covers her eyes sometimes.

She is my quiet one. My child who is very fearful. If there is ever anything I want to teach her in life, something that is not part of her natural set of abilities, it would be to move past her fear and into her own greatness. She is calm and quiet in her own realm. She moves through this world, seeing things through her own eyes. She creates dialogue and weaves a story about herself, about others. She sees things. She knows things. Whether it’s by intuition or exceptional perception, I wouldn’t know. She’s very quiet and private about many things. And she shuts down and doesn’t speak at all if she fears doing so would put her under scrutiny. In short, when she speaks, when she really tries to express herself, I do my best to listen.

Our moment today was at the Art Museum. It’s the first time that I’ve taken her that I really could see it through her eyes. She’s five so it’s not a surprise that before this, she wasn’t all that interested in art that hung in oversized hallways. I really wasn’t expecting too much out of today’s visit, but once I saw her face, I realized immediately that I wish we had all day to explore and go exactly at her pace. There was at least one thing in every room that spoke to her, that drew her in, that transformed her face. Several made her smile a beautiful genuine smile and one painting, of a one room school, brought her to tears.

She tried to explain it to me, her feelings, her emotions, but her language was inadequate to do so. Instead of sinking into frustration, I just asked her if it was a good feeling and she said yes. I told her that it was good that she was feeling things when she looked at the art. The point of art is to pour all your emotional energy into what you create, and for the person who gets to enjoy that art, it’s hard not to come away feeling some of the emotion that was spent creating it. She seemed to like that answer.

One of my favorite things was walking through the galleries and having to walk back to look at something that she just HAD to see and asking me to read the description so she could understand it.

And then there was Buddha. We’d already walked through European Art. Art that undoubtedly reminded her of church and of school. So much of the art was the traditional crucifixion and Madonna and child. And it was all very similar looking. Similar paint colors, textures, lines, representations. She’s a smart child, it wasn’t hard for her to understand what she was seeing. But the Buddha, that truly caught me off guard. He looked nothing like the religious art from the previous corridors. He was a traditional Buddha. No way one person could confuse one for the other. Especially not a perceptive 5 year old. And yet, she did.

“Momma.. that’s… Mommy, is that Jesus?” I looked at her and smiled. “No honey that’s not Jesus, but that is a very important part of someone else’s religion. Just as important to them as Jesus is to us”

“But mommy, it looks like Jesus”. It most certainly didn’t.

And then it hit me. Maybe she was seeing.. feeling, whatever the person who crafted that Buddha was feeling. And real inspiration, how could that be anything but a gift?

She knows what we believe and she very much loves her God and her Jesus, but she could also feel what a piece of art meant to someone else continents away and 1500 years ago.

It’s that clutch point. All those things she knows, that she sees because nobody has had the chance to tell her she CAN’T yet. I love it and I love that I get to witness that, to be part of it in my own amazing way. And something I said with my oldest, that I can’t help but echo with my youngest. It’s really all I can do to just not stand in her way. Quiet and reserved? Yes. Fearful? Yes. But she is capable and she is whole. And she reminds me of that saying “Speak your mind, even if your voice shakes” (Maggie Kuhn).

What she says may come out in whispers, but it’s worth listening to. And it just might be the best thing you get to hear all week.

I love you baby.