My Mother Says We Are Her Wealth

 


Fog blankets everything, a cover so thick it lends mystery to the stream of trills and warbles that come from creatures unseen, and through the open door a coolness seeps, welcome after so much heat.  A quiet space. 

In the last several weeks, I've gotten out of the habit of waking early, but this morning John and I were up at five so he could leave by six, and I'm remembering again why I soaked in these mornings.  I'm a night owl, or so I thought, but months ago when John began tucking in by nine and waking up at five, I discovered that early birds have their own rewards.





Living has been unpleasantly busy lately.  It's not so much the doing and working that is unpleasant, though occasionally it is, but rather the fact that work hasn't stopped since the sun began.  Finishing things is satisfying.  Planting seeds, once complete, is a reward unto itself.  Cleaning and mopping-- when it happens-- is necessary and makes our home a place of rest when work is done.  Lately, though, I haven't found time even for that!

A few nights ago, friends from church unexpectedly popped in for a five-minute visit.  Steve wasn't feeling well enough to stay, but the spilled piles of laundry that covered the living room floor and the narrow trail that led through the otherwise destroyed kitchen didn't exude peaceful hospitality, either.  I'd barely been inside the house for a week, but it took the regret of being unready for people we love to solidify the fact that too much busy is a bad thing.  Now that the garden is completed, flowers the chickens uprooted re-sown, and most of those pressing things that truly must be done by a certain time finished, I find space to write.

Work has great value, going here and there for weddings and picnics and church is a joy,  planting a garden is necessary and worthwhile, but too much leaves one feeling more like a hamster than a human.  I've said this before and again and will again, and I do so because I need the constant reminder that this is all precious.  It's all too easy for the necessary tasks of motherhood to obscure the truth-- to allow duties and obligations and chores to smother the savoring.  This time is precious.  All time is precious.  If the Lord grants me the years, will I be proud when I'm sixty about how many quarts of garden food I canned for the winter?  About the great numbers of perennials I transplanted?  Will I honestly care about how filthy the kitchen floor was when guests arrived?  About the endless string of to-dos that reproduced whenever I turned away?  Will regret for bad temper and impatience and misused time be canceled by the fact that stuff got done?

The obvious and simple answer is "no."  Of course it won't.  The accomplishments and to-dos that one can list on paper are not the true legacy.  Like rags wrapped around a bright jewel, they sustain something greater than what they are.  Their entire reason for being lies within, and if one just dumps the jewel on the ground and carts the visible rags around instead, one's a fool.

Sometimes busyness and events and accomplishments are like those rags.  A certain amount are necessary; they protect; they allow the jewel to stay unscratched and shiny, but at the end of the day, they're still rags.  As parents, the bulk of our time should be spent with those Jewels within instead of with the rags that often weave our days together.  Rags aren't eternal.  Our children are.

After I finish the overdue quarter reports today, there will be reading on the couch, there will be cuddling, and there will be a deliberate attempt to reclaim what I've been given right now.  I will have regrets when I'm sixty-- heavy and many, I know-- but I don't want the bulk of them to involve neglecting the jewels for the sake of the rags.