A Moment, A Window

So I've been running, running, running: from about 6:00 in the morning when the household awakens, first Annika, then everyone else by default, until 1 in the morning, when I have been going to sleep most nights, generally pleased by the time I've had to myself and unperturbed by the impending 5 hours of sleep. And in a funny way, it's not so bad. I think temperamentally I am pretty languorous, although that sounds more glamorous than what I mean, which is that if I were left to my own devices on a deserted island I'd be pretty happy just to lie around in a hammock and read. But somehow when my life is very full and even frenzied I slip into another self that is somehow just as much me, if that makes any sense: a me who thrives on casting a wide net out into the sea of life (oy, sorry) and managing everything that comes back to me.

But when I'm in this full and frenzied mode, I almost never stop. It's almost as though I can't or I wouldn't be able to get started up again. And tonight, after working, picking up Lily at her friend's house, delivering a disc to another friend's house for a project we're doing together, coming home, making dinner, putting both girls to bed, and sitting at my computer for a couple of hours, I decided to sew a button on Ben's shirt, which he needs for a trip tomorrow.

My sewing basket was in Lily's room, so I pushed open the door, gently, but instead of just taking the basket off the bureau and tiptoeing back out, I went over to her bed to see how she was sleeping, which I do most nights, at some point: adjusting the covers, straightening her out, smoothing her hair off her face. For some reason, I felt moved to lie down beside her, so I did, which she would have loved had she been awake (Mama, SLEEP with me, she says, every night, knowing I will smile and give her another kiss and another hug but eventually go back out). I lay on my side beside her, placed my hand on her side and felt her ribcage rise and fall, listened to her breathe.

And I lay like that for a little while, until I felt that I would fall asleep if I stayed, and when I got up I noticed that she'd moved her little chair by the side of her bed, and on it sat a little tin cup full of water. Essentially, she'd made a little night-table for herself, with a drink on top, which struck me as almost inconceivably poignant. You see, I know that Lily is intrigued by night-tables, for some unknown reason. She has asked a few questions, made a few comments, that have let me know this is so, and the fact that she had decided she wanted one of one of her own and rigged this up, filled the cup in the bathroom herself, and set it there beside her bed, made me feel in the moment her full complexity, her independence, her own-ness, so strong already, in a way that I think would not be evident to anyone but me.

Anyway. I guess the point is that I'm glad I slowed down, lay down, stopped. And feeling thankful for the right things. At least right now.