don’t pull on the curtains

This appeared in my “on this day” feature of Facebook. I had forgotten I typed out these words five years ago. And friends, they made me teary. Because, well, they’ve come true. I no longer cook with a toddler on my hip and my two oldest girls mentioned in here are grown and live far away. Sometimes in the midst of crazy it’s hard to remember that those days are finite. Be blessed. 

Tell me you’ve had those days.

Those days where the time ticks slowly. Where the battle seemed to start before the day even broke first light. Days where the clean home turns messy in moments, where dinner seems elusive, and the little ones forget that they’re really friends.

That was my yesterday.  At least the afternoon.

The older boys were picking at each other — and they were loud. I stood at the cutting board listening to my knife as it chopped through the broccoli. With each pass of the blade the noise in my vaulted main level creeped up and along with it my anxiety and irritation.

So I blurted out  — why can’t you guys just be quiet for once?

And immediately I wished I had just kept chopping. Dicing garlic, cutting cucumbers, cooking rice. Working and joyful or at least unaffected by the noises in my home. Instead I let my own sense of overwhelm trickle down to them, who at that point were just playing and laughing and well, being kids.

Sometimes I wish that I had more patience.

There will come a day, and all too quickly, where my heart will long for those noises of winter bound boys racing around the living room. Of those sweet little feet tracking mud across my just cleaned floor. I’ll long for the worn out grass under the swingset and the patch of daisies missing the flowers that were picked just for me.

I’ll miss the little one clinging to my legs as I chop veggies, and the ease with which I cook with one on my hip. The living room that I work so hard to be keep clean will one day ache to have just a couple toys strewn about. It will be quiet. That day is coming. And when it does I’ll remember days like yesterday and wish for just a couple moments of those crazy days of raising my children.

These motherhood days are fleeting. I feel it. The time moving faster — I see it when I look at Hannah and Chloe — it feels like yesterday when they were the ones racing around the living room making noise as I prepared dinner. And now I can count the summers that Hannah will be home on one hand. Time moves too fast.

It’s not about patience.

It’s about perspective.

It’s about remembering the movement of time, the passing of days, while living in the now.

Thankful for those noises. The mud.

And the little one pulling on the curtains.

~Rachel