"It's not healthy to hurry," he told me quietly as I rushed around gathering food, water, shin guards, and shoes for Trin's soccer match.
I laughed as loudly as I agreed. Then I rushed on.
We picked up Trin, and I lit into him (translation: earnestly expressed my feelings and unmet needs) about not calling me after school as we'd agreed this morning. For almost an hour, I had chewed my nails waiting for the phone to ring so I could tell him to walk the 2.5 miles home alone -- a new independence for him -- but when it finally rang, it was a friend's mother who had taken him home with her son as rain was pelting the soccer field where they had played. If only I could instill in him awareness, that invaluable notion that (m)others have needs at the same time we do....
We talked and listened and talked with each other, and in the end I could see how he saw it and he could see how I saw it, and both of us were moved to tears that we could be seen, really seen by one another when there had been such tension only minutes ago. What precious relief and hope filled us both as he wiggled into my lap for a snuggle, long legs dangling shoes nearly as big as my own off the end of the car seat.
Later, Ben offered him a book from the 1950's that showed a pictorial progression from a woman with a cat outward into the cosmos until the Milky Way itself was only a speck in a cloud of stars.
Awareness, I thought. How insignificant are my efforts to cultivate family-oriented awareness when I am missing so much: the young man with the sign on the corner who is shivering in the cold while I drive to a soccer match (borrowed car), children eating chemicals that are marketed as "hot lunch," kids being crammed thirty-six to a classroom. How much am I willing to take responsibility for in a given moment?
How big is my cosmos?
"It's not good to hurry or worry," said Sam.
And he should know, being nearly eight years wise.
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