Home » Five Minute Friday (Page 4)

Category Archives: Five Minute Friday

five minute friday: look

Posted on by | 9 Comments

…where a brave and beautiful bunch gather every week to find out what comes out when we all spend five minutes writing on the same topic and then sharing ‘em over here.

joy

Dear Quail,

I need to say I’m sorry to you baby girl. I had a brief lapse in faith, and I started to doubt what I know of you.  Lately when I look at you, I haven’t been able to see your heart first. Instead; in front of that has been your little hands and the damage they have done to those around you. I know it is hard to be three. It is even harder, when you haven’t been able to make your voice fluid enough to tell others how hard it is to be three. When I looked, I didn’t see the you I’ve come to know, the kind heart that is full of wonder and concern for those around you.

You see, in the past few weeks I’ve been getting calls of your unkindness. Reports that you have pulled hair, struck out, scratched and taken down other little children. I was surprised to hear this. I was so caught off guard that in those moments, I forgot who you really are, and I forgot to ask why. What had happened before you struck out. When I looked at you, I just saw an angry little girl, with dirt on her dress and sand in her hair  hair who wasn’t getting her way and was striking out.

And then,  I asked what had happened before you got angry. I heard how one little girl wouldn’t give back the toy you had been playing with. Another ignored your hug. Then one wasn’t doing what was asked of her by the teacher and you decided to intervene and “mother” the situation yourself. Because it matters to you to do what is asked. To comfort those that are upset. To follow the golden rule before the law of the jungle.

I know children have to work some of this out. But the real reason that I am apologizing is for the other week. The story that broke the storyteller’s back. I had a report that you had pulled the hair of a large 4 year old and taken her down. Once again, I forgot to ask why. When we got home, I gave you a stern talking to and put you in a very long time-out. I started to question if this was more than the “terrible threes” or you modeling younger behavior.

Then I asked why.

 Turns out you had wanted to play with the other children. You had come up to a sandbox bustling with little ones and hoped to join in the fun. This 4 year old told you that you couldn’t come in to play with them. I can almost see the fraction of an instant of sadness that would have crossed that bird-perch of a bottom lip of yours before you decided to set her straight. She looked at you. But she didn’t see you. Your response was unkind. You pulled her hair, pinned her down and then crawled on top of her. Dear Quail- that may not have been the best way to get yourself invited in to play. We will work on gentler ways to get your voice heard. But, I want you to know that I am sorry. I never want to silence you from defending yourself. I never want you to feel that we your family, don’t see you when we look at you. I never want you to worry that we won’t try to understand what you are telling us, what you need us to see, to know, to hear. We will not forget your loving heart.

Next time, we will remember to ask why. We won’t assume your disability renders you unable to understand. We know you are so very capable and that you do understand what you see, what you hear, what goes on around you. We see you.  But next time, pretty please, maybe next time, you ask the teacher for some help, rather than taking on the big kids yourself?

Love, Momma

If your eyes are blinded with your worries, you cannot see the beauty of the sunset. – Jiddu Krishnamurti Quotes.

 

 

Five Minute Friday: wide

Posted on by | 4 Comments

…where a brave and beautiful bunch gather every week to find out what comes out when we all spend five minutes writing on the same topic and then sharing ‘em over here

Her grin cracks open wide now when she sees one of us. Her gaze is steady. It locks into your eye, your heart, your core with an initial seriousness that is well beyond her weeks on this earth. And then, just when her eyes show their twinkle she grins. Wide. And reaches out to be picked up. There is nothing so heart melting as a baby choosing to look you in the eye and grin. And when it comes after she has studied you with her gaze, you somehow are left to feel you earned it.

We thought she might be a serious, studious little soul when she first joined us. She came with an air of quiet contemplation. When the Sistred rallies around her and close in to breathe in her neck, nibble her sweet cheeks and tickle her toes she initially just looked on. Not scared, not rattled, not with fury or fear. Just quiet baby contemplation. Then in the quiet spaces between her sister’s glee and abandon she started to talk. To  wait till we settled in to gaze at her and tell us in serious tones about herself. You have to hold your words for her to find hers.  You have to give her some space. But if you can’t, if you just have to exclaim and nibble and snuggle into her babyhood, she waits. Quietly.

And when you are ready, her grin opens wide and draws you in even closer.

Five Minute Friday: Here

Posted on by | 1 Comment

Where a flash mob of folks spend five minutes all writing on the same topic and then share ‘em over here. While this weekly practice is relatively new for me, I am so enjoying the ritualness of it. The savoring of these moments in my life of cared for bits of ordinary. These few minutes of reflection fill up my heart each week and spill over onto my pages creating a snapshot with words.

GO:

“Here. This is for her scrapbook.”

Angeline handed over the ghostly, grainy image she had just printed with such care. Somberly and teary-eyed, I looked down into my daughter’s heart.

For the last 3 and a half years, we had been making regular trips to see Dr. Lucas. More times than not, the news he had to deliver surprised us, for better or for worse. It gave us tenuous ropes to hold for the here, the now, the future.

“Your daughter has early signs of pulmonary hypertension and a moderately sized VSD. In the future, we may be looking at going in.”

“There is a windsock of tissue forming. There is a chance; and I don’t know how big of one, that this hole may close on its own. Time will tell.”

“We didn’t expect her to grow. At all. But she did; she has, look at her here. No doctor in this country would even think of opening her up. We’ll revisit surgery in the future. But not now.”

“Your newborn also has a VSD. It is so much smaller than her sister’s. Her aortic valve though, it is functionally bi-cuspid. Do not Google that. It will scare you. She is doing fine here, now.”

“It is nothing but good news this time. The hole, it is almost gone. Almost entirely. That windsock of tissue has no clear opening at the end now. There is a bubble formed and we can barely see blood funneling out of it. She’s going to be fine. Here, here is a picture of her heart for your scrapbook.”

Here. She’s here. They are both here. We are so very blessed to be able to continually fill our scrapbooks with our, their dear hearts.

Stop.

Five Minute Friday: Beyond

Posted on by | 3 Comments

Where a flash mob of folks spend five minutes all writing on the same topic and then share ‘em over here.

Beyond: Go-

Parenting is an exercise in moving beyond your own ego, your own expectations and ideals. It takes the very heart of you, the core of the cells that make you, pulling them from your center and heaving them into your arms and care. Ready as you thought you were. Becoming a parent takes that raw image of your basic, untended self and spirals it out into the world to discover it anew.  In your children, you experience another version of yourself. Both your best and your worst qualities tangled genetically, forever entwined with those of the person you have loved. You experience the randomness of nature and nurture as your children grow and think and speak and believe. Things you both have grown with, thought of, spoke with and believed. And sometimes; painfully, things you have not. Your children, they move you beyond yourself in a way you could never have asked for before they came to you.

Stop.

Five Minute Friday: Enough

Posted on by | 2 Comments

Joining Lisa-Jo Baker’s friday ritual of a five minute writing exercise on a topic she gives. If you care to join in come here.

Go:

“Enough!”

I look down and see a tear start in her eye and feel one start in my heart. I am tired. Tired and not able to hear Zuzu’s needs at the speed in which they zoom from her brain to her heart to her mouth.  I say it too often. I think it daily. I feel it when I need to lie down just for a few more minutes. At 6:05 am, when the chatter is next to my ear before I’ve even had time to say good-bye to my dream and caffeinate for the day ahead. At 8:19pm, when I intended for them to be in bed already snoring softly. When one child’s crying lets up just as the cascade of the other’s tremolo starts up. Before I can tell myself I have said it enough; the words hang in the air. Really, enough with my words, my thoughts. I want it to be. I want the energy needed to stay present and focused. I want my brain to stop crying from the oversort it needs to do to filter in what they really are asking for. What they really are saying to me. I know years from now; months from now, it won’t be enough. It never is. I bend down, I wipe her tear from her eye, apologize and ask Zuzu to repeat what she just said. She smiles. She hugs my neck and bounds off…

Stop.

Five Minute Friday: Story

Posted on by | 1 Comment

Today I’m going to start a Fave-O-Lit of my own! I’m joining Lisa-Jo Baker’s friday ritual of a five minute writing exercise on a topic she gives. I find the less time I take to blog the less inspired I feel to do it or get back to it. When I’ve been absent from here and I go back I stare at the screen feeling critical of all I missed putting down and last as to where to start. The less inspired I feel, the less I think in terms of stories and then the less I remember. It’s a way of thinking really, thinking of my life in terms of stories. It’s one I enjoy and one I want to give to my children as a gift. My excuse of late is that I’m too tired to get up early and find a photo and wax on about it poetically and when I do feel inspired, the children radar in on that light in my eye and want my attention and it rightfully goes to them. Unfortunately when they tire of me, they leave me tired.  So this exercise will take me out of my usual patterns and hopefully stir up that inkwell in my head. If you care to join in come here

Today’s topic is story and here we go:

When I was little I felt like I had no story to tell. Or more to the point I felt critical of my storytelling ability rather then accepting. Each year for 3 years in a row my Grandmother gave me a 5 year diary. It was a gift that I couldn’t understand at the time. I always had my nose in a book so it would only make sense that I would like to put my own stories on paper. I tried a time or two, but then I would go back and read it and feel like it hadn’t been worth the paper it was put on and I would stop recording. Then I would try again when the start of the 2nd and subsequent years came up in the diary. Each with the same results of a few entries, a few rereads and more than a little disappointment.

Instead I would write on end in these little yellow notebooks that had blue lines in them. And what I wrote were scripts  for the shows I watched. For me it was The Smurfs.

What’s funny now is my daughter Zuzu and I have a little activity we both enjoy. I pull up a photo file and she picks one out and dictates a story to me about it. At first I found myself irritated that what she told me were plotlines to Dora the Explorer or some princess doll she happened to be playing with. Then I noticed that if she hadn’t recently been watching TV the scripts were versions of our day where someone went to time out, someone needed taxi money to get to work or someone had to pump their milk for the baby that they had. Hearing these stories made me smile and made her feel important. Now she has moved on to dictating her stories and illustrating them in what she calls her “Chapter Books” at school as well. I hope she always feels her stories are worth writing down and it doesn’t take her as long as it took me to get there; whether those stories come from Dora the Explorer’s land or her own.