Return of The Queen

Big A finally made it back to the castle after enjoying a hiatus from our real lives. Instead of waking each morning at 6:00 to be shuttled to the sitter and then day camp, she's spent a lot of time this summer in the company of her relatives, eating smores, beaching it and enjoying being a child in general.

I wish that I could give that to her....lazy summer days, unfettered by exhausting work schedules and a universe in which the sun revolves around her and not the various circumstances in her parent's lives.

Completely unappreciated until I became a mother were the summer days of my youth. How could you know that there was magic in the most simple things back then--just having a mom to stay home with and deliver popsicles to whichever end of the property we chose to sojourn to that day?

I'm amazed lately at how time is flying, flying, flying by and my inability to grasp it at all. In January, I bought paint for the girls rooms.

Jan-u-ar-ee.

It is now July. The paint is still sitting in the cans, no longer gently nudging me when I open the hall door to grab the vacuum, but instead grabbing my shirt and screaming at me: "Intentions, gathering dust here".

I remember the day that we selected the colors; how Big A literally had at least forty different selection cards in her sweet hands, squinting and holding them up, comparing and contrasting the subtle differences in this brands lavender to that brands lavender, noting that one of the shades of yellow looked like butter while a different one reminded her too much of a bee, so it was the butter that we went with.

What is wrong with me that I've found time to do many other things, but not to pick up a paintbrush and give her the room that she wants? Please don't feel compelled to answer that question--in reality it is rhetorical.

I keep thinking that I need more time, more time, more time, despite the fact that I get up very early and go to bed very late each night--when in reality, what I need is to prioritize.

This catch-up way of life isn't good for any of us--this thought that tomorrow, I won't be as busy and I'll make sure that I take time then to hold Little A a few minutes longer or play hangman with Big A instead of folding the laundry--thank God that I have a chance to make this right, that my tomorrow's haven't been taken from me.

I've decided that most of my recreational activities are going to be halted. Soccer cleats exchanged for family bike rides, basketball with co-workers traded for helping Big A hone her own skills. Softball? I'm keeping it. It's mine. I'm not a martyr, just a mom....an imperfect, sometimes very selfish one at that.

I've been focusing too much on the small details of the painting of our lives--making sure the petals on this flower and that flower were just so, without taking time to step back and appreciate the entire mural.

And there we are, back to the paint again. The paint, which tonight will make it's debut on the walls of Big A's quarters, the servant thanking the Lord above with each stroke that she has a chance to color the world of those she loves the most.