Breathing

The sun was beginning her creep toward the horizon. It was the time when the earth began to take on the golden glow of the suns rays. It was hot. I think near ninety earlier in the day. Chad and Charlie were in the driveway passing a soccer ball between them. “Dog” the game is called.

Bounce the ball on your knee, your foot, your head, your chest without it touching the ground.
Charlie first, one bounce. Chad, two bounces. Charlie, three bounces. Chad, four. Each hit to the ground is a letter. The first with “D-O-G” loses.

Charlie had already beat me.
He beat Chad, too. The rules were adjusted. Chad gets another bounce. I get to spell D-O-G-G-I-E.

We still lose. Every time. The student has surpassed the teachers.

Meadow was behind the house shaded by a large umbrella–escaping the sun that beat down at the front of the house. She was writing a story in her broken kindergarten writing. She read it to me later–a story about a toy. What kind of toy is it? I have no idea. Is it a toy your can throw? her story read. Her own take on Gerald and Piggy.

Chanelle was sitting in the back of the car watching the DOG game. Secretly cheering for Daddy but diplomatically keeping her cheers to herself. My phone sat beside her in the car blaring a playlist from Spotify. Justin Timberlake and Anna Kendrick’s True Colors, Andra Day’s Rise Up, The Boxer by Mumford and Sons. She sang along with every tune, as she always does. Next, Ingrid Michaelson’s Keep Breathing began to play.

This song makes perfect sense, she told me.
What? I asked.
If you listen to the words, she said, It makes perfect sense.

I listened. . .

I want to change the world, instead I sleep.
I want to believe in more than you and me
All I can do is keep breathing.
All we can do is keep breathing.
Now.
All that I know is I’m breathing.
All I can do is keep breathing. . . .

I sat down in the back of the car beside Chanelle  and looked at her with wonder, amazed that she doesn’t just hear lyrics, but she hears them. I looked in front of me and saw Charlie beating Chad in DOG. (For the record–Chad can still beat him in basketball–for now.) And I thought about Meadow sitting in the shade of the umbrella on the deck writing her story all on her own–except for the occasional MOMMY! How do you spell “new”?

I closed my eyes and breathed deep, how did we get here?

*******

Later that night, after the kids were in bed, I held my phone up and showed Chad a picture that I had taken that morning. All three kids getting on the bus in a single file line. Charlie first, Chanelle last, and Meadow sandwiched between them.

I had clicked the shutter that morning knowing that this scene would never happen again. Knowing that next year the girls would climb the bus stairs as a duo, long after Charlie will have begun his day at the junior high.

In the moment, I had swallowed hard on the familiar lump in my throat that shows up with every change, every new season. The tears fell as I held the picture up to Chad, its going to be so different, I told him.

It will be, he responded.

Breathe. Breathe. 

********

If parenting has taught me nothing else, it has taught me that change is constant. As soon as we settle into one routine, one set of rules, one comfortable rhythm, everything is shaken up and we are forced into another. Adjustments are made, new routines are found, and we find a new rhythm.

I’m learning trying to learn that there is no holding on too tight. There is only, as Chanelle reminded me tonight, breathing, Breathing deep on today, knowing that tomorrow we will breathing again. Breathing deep on the moments, holding the memories close, and preparing for the new memories that will come.

Breathe. Breathe.

*******

I am reminded of words I read (or heard?) Rob Bell say a few years ago. Words that were stuck to my computer screen on a tiny white Post-It note until the sticky got unsticky and left the note laying on my desk. The words are still there.

To be here is glorious.

Yes. To be here is glorious.

What a gift it is to be here. What a gift it is to breathe.