The Time that Goes Unnoticed

I sit here to write as I sip some warm vanilla tea, for I know it has been way too long. I wanted to post every week, or month at least, yet it's been months since I've written. I find myself wondering how October is just about over. How my big boy is 8 and my baby will be 2 next year. How another year just seemed to go by almost unnoticed. Is it just me? Sometimes I think so, for time seems to run from me like a hare from a fox. I've always felt that but it seems more so then ever lately.

That saying 'the days are long but the years are short' doesn't really sit right with me either. Our days seem to fly even though I vow to slow things down.

Yet I found where the time goes...it is lost in all the little things that recklessly love to steal and pass it. Many, many, many little things. Things that sooooo often go unnoticed. Almost like the bones that hold us up.

Being a mom is the most magical thing in the world, yet it is also the hardest job and biggest test ever given. The clean up is only understood by the ones who have raised those small wild children. The creative children, the playful outdoor ones who bring in bugs and mud and mix things together and all that. The ones who leave Orbeez in the bathroom sink as all hope calls none went down the drain. It's in the food dropped on the floor that our dog didn't like, the juice drips next to the couch or the dried apple core conveniently forgotten on the window sill. It's in the clean laundry piling up, (washing is easy...it's the putting away where time is needed). It's in  the white socks turned bottoms black, just laying by the back door from running free outdoors or the muddy t-shirt left on the sandbox. It's in the beautiful pile of books waiting to be read yet time steals another day or two or three before they are gotten to. It's in the groceries to be bought (and put away), the appointments to be made or the little extra classes here and there longing to find a place in our days. All that. Time is wrapped up in so much of that being a mother.

Yet so much of that goes unnoticed. I'm not complaining...I'm just saying.

Raising boys, homeschooling and just all life throws along with that...it's a lot. All that while still wanting to hold my own. Run my own business, (a few of them actually). All that while attempting to photograph the beauty in the world and sell my art. All that and still know I'm putting good out into the world. Good art, good words...just good. All that.

Yet looking at my boys, knowing I am there for them. That I show up day after day, repeating the same things. Repeating myself more then I should as my words seems to get lost in the drifting air...only passing little ears. Looking at them knowing they have this space...this safe space of not only a house but a home where they can thrive because I have made it that way for them. A home surrounded by beauty. The sunshine, the plants, the flowers, the nature. A home that allows this mess of mud and crafts and hot glue stuck to the art room floor that can (eventually) be cleaned up. A home that allows paint on the table and things taped to the wall. A home that I decorate beautifully in so much white (because I want it that way) as I try to chase the minimalism look and lifestyle under clippings of cardboard and LEGOS and wooden trains.

So through all the stories we read together, the crafts we do and the things we bake, I'm here. Through yet another beautiful year of homeschooling...learning about our world and all the beautiful places in it and the talk of traveling again to arguing over a simple math lesson to creating art and singing in the kitchen to our favorite songs...it's all right here in these little things.  It's in the little arms around my neck and the smiles that decorate their little faces. It's in "You're the worse mom ever" to the "You're my best friend, I love you mom." It's in all of that where I show up. I show up and yes, I mess up. Sometimes over and over again. Yet I learn. My boys learn. Day in and day out I still show up with more love then I could ever express for them.

I show up day in and day out with the best of intentions.

Sometimes I feel I go nowhere, sometimes I feel I have the power to change the world. Yet though it all, my love remains. 

And as night falls and I kiss their little faces as they drift off, I hope they drift off to a place of beauty and peace. A place that only a good childhood could bring them. And as a new day comes it brings on a flood of imagination that could only be brought out in a child. That could only come forth openly and freely with freedom and a mother to fall back on. A mother who is willing to give up time for what she wants to do to pick up dried grapes off the floor, play hot wheels or dinosaurs or wash little hand prints off the glass doors and windows (again) or tend to scraped knees.  All the little things that clearly go unnoticed as time ticks by. Yet all the little things that need to be there to grow a beautiful soul. A soul who will one day stand proud in this world, speak his mind, stand up for what he believes in and puts forth good in this world...just as I strive to do. Yet they couldn't do it without all these little things done for them first.

So no, I am not complaining. Just saying. I wouldn't change a wet towel and swim shorts forgotten on the wooden floor, granola spilled in the back of my jeep or another pillow fort for the world. I'm not complaining. Just saying. So much of what we do as mothers goes unnoticed. But that's ok because so much time that will never come back to us in minutes comes back in a love only a mother and child could share. Love only a mother and child could understand. For that I will show up again and again and again for, because to me...there is nothing else more magical in the world then that.