Still Here

I find a place of stillness next to a fire on the iced-over shore of Lake Erie.

Snug inside while the wind quite literally shrieked past the bay of windows that looked like a white wall - nothing visible beyond the furious blizzard inches from the glass.

I sat in a chair and knit for a weekend with no interruption at all and felt clear for the first time in forever. Sometimes life can feel like a white out and I'm stumbling through, blind.  Hoping I don't take a wrong turn and find myself on thin ice when the winds subside.

The people I've known for a lifetime know this, too, and clear a path, in their lives, schedules and time.  We kiss our babies and pile in a jeep headed for a little red house on the coast.

There are big beds with crisp linens. Long luxurious showers. No itinerary, just each of us doing what we need, what we want, in each moment. We talk over coffee in the mornings and wine at night. Watch a few movies under thick blankets in front of the fire. Some of us take naps. Read. We rest in ways not possible during the swirl of regular life.

I knit next to a fire and, while I miss my babies - I'm so thankful for this opportunity to step away, to shed the labels and responsibilities of being Somebody's Mom. Somebody's wife. The one who does the laundry, knows what's for dinner and what time we need to leave for the basketball game. I hand the reins to someone else for the weekend and in what feels at once awkward and strange yet familiar and warm, I dig deep and find myself. Oh. I remember you. I know you. Stripped of all the things I do, I find me.

Still, days fly by and home again, I turn outward. Arms full of littles who never want to let go, I'm back to holding the weight of our life. Knowing that underneath it all, I'm still here.

Slipping into the third trimester just days before the beginning of Lent, it was just exactly what I needed to know.


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