Around the Edges

Today I was knitting on the couch. And by knitting, I mean I was buried beneath my two toddler barnacles who were doing their best to jostle and twist my knitting and maybe even get stabbed in the eye with a double point. All this was happening while I was also "teaching" math - that is, helping where help was needed and someone just simply couldn't remember how ratios worked. All this to say, somehow I ended up knitting with a pencil instead of my wooden, double pointed size 10 needle - so similar in size, weight and feel that it took a moment for it to register.

While I ripped back and reinserted the proper implement, I thought about a time when I intentionally knit with pencils. That is, a time when I was so desperate to knit that I improvised. I was a kid then, but I carefully practiced casting on and knitting a few rows on, yes, sharpened pencils I found around the house. It seems that the lack of proper materials was no match for my budding creativity. I was going to be "me" no matter what, darn it all.

These days I'm buried under toddlers. When they aren't snuggling and jumping on and squeezing and kissing and loving on me, the baby inside me is kicking me as a reminder that I'm never, ever, ever not being touched by someone. And in the midst of all this touching and loving and skin-fatigue, I'm also teaching and parenting and laundering and cooking and merry-making and love-giving and reassuring and disciplining and cleaning.

But regardless, I can't be someone I'm not. Like my 8 year old self, I'll find a way - fit myself around the edges and intertwined and infused with the job and life I have here. Mothering and living and working the way I do, the way I can. I find a way to fit in the desperate need to create that has always been a part of me into this vocation that is all about the giving away.

I hand back the pencil to the giggling math-resistant child and say a little prayer of thanks that God makes Mamas in all shapes in sizes, with all affinities and skills and desires and talents. And that I can do this, just the way I am. Fitting my own peculiar self in around the edges - uniquely fitted for the life for which I was made.

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