Watch!

Watch!

It’s the constant cry echoing against the walls of our house.  Crashing against the trees by the playground.  Reverberating off the asphalt on our driveway.

Look!

And I do.  Usually.

And I try to remember what that’s like.  Someone watching your performance.  Watching and grinning and even sometimes clapping.  Someone whose eyes are steady on you only.  Whose focus is directed on you alone.

Not many other things in adult life are like that now, are they?

No wonder kids need a mommy and a daddy.

No wonder it is a gift both beautiful and rare to feel appreciated and to be loved.  Adored.

I have been consciously trying to make a new choice lately.

I have been trying to listen to my children.

To really listen.

To stop walking when Bergen says, “Mom.  Look.  Look at this fan.”

As we stand in a little gazebo after a wedding, he directs me to stand right in the center.  To look up.

“See how it looks like you are staring at a sunflower, Mommy?” he asks.

Bergen and I stop.  I walk to him.  (Even though I wanted to walk to the car at a speedier rate.)

But I stop.  I look up.  And the fan did resemble a sunflower.  It was pretty.

And I wouldn’t have noticed if Bergen hadn’t shown me.  Hadn’t asked me to stop.  To watch. To look up.

Otto points out birds and airplanes and ants and lady bugs and geckos.  And I am learning to admire them with him as well.

To lean over when London laughs at her nearly empty plate and says, “Mom, I just said to myself in my head – ‘Hey piece of lettuce, how could I possibly have let you escape?'”

And I laugh with her.

Because she’s funny.

And because she’s eight.

And because she’s mine.

And because she won’t stay eight.

And because she won’t stay mine.

Maybe it’s all the weddings we’ve been to lately.

Or the long hair that makes my Scout look like a tween.

Or the fact that Riley drives herself to Algebra class.

Or Otto flying past the toddler stage.

Or Finn getting new freckles.

Or Mosely losing another tooth.

Or the big move ahead of us.

But I feel so stinkin’ sentimental lately.

So clingy to the present.

So all about the Now.

I want to shout to everyone around me, “Watch.  Look!”

It’s a bewitching way to live.

But I am grateful to sit in the middle of it.

Eyes full.

Heart crowded.

Hands loaded with the whole lot of it.