I'm glad to be alive today.
I felt inspired today…and felt a little bit of joy and that full feeling you get when you do something that seems worthwhile.
I'm always doing something worthwhile, I know. Feeding and dressing and cleaning and loving this dear little babe. Our little Winter. Logically, it's totally worthwhile. Doing dishes, vacuuming our old Turkish rug, frying chicken in cinnamon, doing laundry. Those are all worthwhile things too I suppose. Anyway, they have to be done. But almost every day lately I wonder what my purpose on this planet is. I wonder why I feel useless. I feel knots in my stomach staring out the window holding a crying baby. There's no one expecting anything from me today. No place I have to be. No thing that urgently needs my attention. Except. The one beautiful soul in my arms. She expects everything from me. She expects life from me. She goes with me everywhere. She sees everything I see. Her tiny bones are growing every moment. Her tiny hands are exploring every moment. And she only knows a world with me in it. I'm her anchor. The first voice she heard was mine. I pushed her body out to life and joy and pain and sorrow and fear. So how could I leave her for that empty craving I feel to be important and have deadlines and have people expecting things from me out in the big world…for being busy. Maybe I used business to run away from something. Maybe I felt that if something was expected of me by important people I would be important. Hell, what am I saying? Winter is important. But I guess there are two kinds of important and really, the second kind of important is the only real important. All the powerful people in the world don't really matter do they? At least, their power makes them matter no more or less. They too were once babies drinking milk from their mamas and their importance, their extraordinary worthwhile-ness hasn't changed. They will always matter in the only way anyone matters.
The reason I felt glad to be alive today was because I stopped trying to justify my life. I had ideas and I did them…and succeeded. I found rubber toys at the goodwill for Winter to chew her sore gums on. I bought pastel paint colors to dress up some furniture. I kissed my brother goodbye for the weekend. I fed our small, purple beta fish (Gravy) with a lump on his fin. I crossed a large street and a man in a pick-up truck screeched to a halt two feet from mine and Winter's bodies. I looked into his face and he had a kind one. He's probably someone's grandpapi. How awful it would have been if he'd stopped later. How awful. And the blood rushed to my head and I said, 'Oh my gosh.' and those could have been my last words. But they weren't. Praise be to God who blows breath into our lungs and keeps the blood pumping through our veins. Praise be to God who holds us when we dance and when we sleep and when we cry and when we make love and when we are in our mom's tummies and when we feel no purpose. Praise be to God when we feel no purpose.
And praise be to God when we do.
