together

Well, we've made it through another January.  There was the snow (most welcome!) that closed school for three days.  The flu that kept three of us down for almost two weeks.  Lots of mud, lots of layers.  January usually gets me down, but somehow, this year, it didn't.  When I sent the kids back to school after a rather lengthy Christmas break, I wasn't ready to see them go.  I welcomed the extra week of time at home, all four of us, due to weather and illness.

We had some rough days, but when I think back on the month, it seems like all I can really remember is being together.  Helen and I watching Beauty and the Beast at 6 am when her fever was too high to sleep.  Arthur and I reading Little House in the Big Woods.  Steve and I, consuming vast quantities of ibuprofen and tea, fluctuating back and forth on who was more fit to accomplish the basic tasks of daily life. Arthur and I decorating the dining room with streamers for Helen's family day dinner, and Helen's face when she saw them.  Steve waking up with me in the night when I needed him, always ready to help, always happy to do it.  Sharing the three heating pads between the four of us and debating if we should just get one more.

In the time it has taken me to write this blog post (about two weeks, if anyone is keeping track), Arthur took his own turn at being sick and now it appears to be mine again.  And while I'm in it, of course I wish for the illness to be over.  But I also wish for a hundred more days of just Arthur and I at home, playing Trouble and sharing blankets.  I know that when I look back on this winter, I will barely be able to conjure up who was sick when and what they had.  But I'll remember that we were together.  

The kids are changing, and I guess what I mean by that is that they're getting older.  They've lost their baby cheeks and their arms and legs keep growing and growing.  But they both still want to be cuddled and tickled, read to and sung to.  And I try not to wonder (but of course I wonder) when it will slowly end, the cuddling and reading, the washing hair and lotioning feet.  Will I even know it's the last time?  Or will I one day realize that it's been three weeks since Arthur asked me to help him dry off after bath?  It makes me think of these words by Iain S. Thomas-

I hope that in the future they invent a small golden light that follows you everywhere and when something is about to end, it shines brightly so you know it’s about to end.

And if you’re never going to see someone again, it’ll shine brightly and both of you can be polite and say, “It was nice to have you in my life while I did, good luck with everything that happens after now.”

And maybe if you’re never going to eat at the same restaurant again, it’ll shine and you can order everything off the menu you’ve never tried. Maybe, if someone’s about to buy your car, the light will shine and you can take it for one last spin. Maybe, if you’re with a group of friends who’ll never be together again, all your lights will shine at the same time and you’ll know, and then you can hold each other and whisper, “This was so good. Oh my God, this was so good.”

Right now, at ages 7 and 5.5, they seem to be on the cusp of something.  A new phase, perhaps.  They're turning into big kids before my eyes and there is no stopping it.  And I'm just trying to hold every bit of these big but still little kids, this twelve year old marriage, this life here in this house, in this city, and whisper to myself, "This is so good."