Absurdity

Toby wakes up and cries because he doesn't feel like going pee pee in the potty right now he just wants to watch his train video in his pajamas and drink chocolate milk. Or maybe he wants to see what things he can hold in the mouth of the toy plastic pliers that he is waving around the bed like a villainous claw. Look mommy! James! They can hold James like this! And he grips James the red engine while making a squinchy, growly face. James falls loose and Toby cries again and I want to run out of the room to my bed and throw my covers over my face for the rest of the day.


But I don't. OK I say, you can stay in your pajamas, but I regret this when we take the pajamas off to pee pee and put them back on again in our usual slow way that makes my bones cringe in frustration and produces no real accomplishment for our day.


I need THAT mommy, get me THAT. He runs to his closet and points at his blue piggy bank on the top shelf. I clangily hand it to him before pulling Charlie from his room and plopping him in the bouncy seat with a bottle propped on a wad of fluffy blankets. Toby follows me closely, his horde of coins clanking with each step like the ghost of Christmas past dragging a trail of chains.


In my bathroom I try to get ready. I let him loll around on the floor while I blow dry my hair and he finds all the treasures a mom's bathroom proposes. An eyelash curler, a contact case lid, my wedding ring. Oops, you can't play with that, I say as he tries to stuff it into the slot of the piggy bank. Whyyyyy? He whines dolefully while playing with it anyway.


Don't you know that it is MOTHER'S DAY and Charlie's Baby Dedication Day and I just want to look NICE at church with my hair NOT in a ponytail for ONCE. And even though it may prevent anyone there from recognizing me altogether, I just don't care today, because it is MOTHER'S DAY and I want to enjoy living it, because I am your MOTHER.


He blinks at me with total incomprehension and tries to hold the contact case lid in the clamp of the eyelash curler. Charlie rallies and drops his bottle over the edge of the bouncy seat with a yelp of glee. I feel like I am somehow missing the magic of this day, and that probably all other mothers are lying in bed with a tray of pancakes festively served beside a long stem rose and steaming cup of coffee, opening construction paper cards with I Heart Mom scrawled in red crayon. Mothers whose husbands are not pastors and working on Sunday.


We make it unceremoniously to service and meet Greg just in time to march Charlie up on stage along with nine other babies for his important spiritual debut. We smile when they call his name and we kiss him and squeeze him and promise in front of the congregation to raise him to know the Lord. I look at his little bean of a body in my arms and hope that I really can do it. That my pouting over Mother's Day and my impatience with his brother and my just imperfectness will not be all he sees in me. I hope he sees something deeper: the thousand foot well that is my heart exploding with wild hope for him.


We sing together, our little family lined up in a row, and I feel a surge of peace when I realize I would never be enough. That even though I love my boys with an aching, relentless energy, I am NOT everything they need. And if I was lovelier and every note sung from my mouth was rich and pure like buttery syrup dripping from a spoon I still couldn't capture the beauty of God for them. And if I was stronger, and when Toby sat by me in church, I didn't guiltily let him fondle the communion crackers and sneak a juice cup just to keep him quiet, I still wouldn't convey the strength of God for them.


I am just their mother, someone to point the way not be the way.


Suddenly, I don't think myself capable of any more joy than I am bursting with today, singing "Beautiful One" loud and free in my own croaking boisterousness with my boys and Greg at my side on my Mother's Day. This morning, if I wrote about happiness it would have been pancakes and compliance, daintily ideal and sickly perfect. In this moment, happiness is feeble and weak and wonderfully satisfying.


God help me trust them to You, my most sacred treasures.