rhythms.

I love to read books about family rhythms.  When I was a new mom and it was just myself and my little guy at home all day together, I often read about rhythms and would try to weave them into our days.  What I have learned about myself, or maybe what I have always known, is that I don't have rhythm.  Truly.  I wanted to float through my days like a dance, moving from one thing to the next, smoothly and consistently.  This was my dream of what I could achieve in parenting if I just prepared more, read more, understood rhythms more.  My days were not, and are not rhythmic.  There are moments of flow, but there is also a whole lot of chaos and spontaneity too.  Sometimes this serves me well; other times it leaves me dreaming of rhythms.

Mindfulness is about seeing clearly and accepting what is.  While I still dream of a well-orchestrated easy morning family rhythm, I have come to accept our last-minute dashes for the door with children dressed and ready to go, proud of ourselves for getting to school on time, early even, only to find we left the backpacks on the front porch.  These are my family rhythms, and while they may not have the grace of a waltz, they are more like a fun impromptu jazz session: you never know what is going to come next.  I am accepting our rhythms and celebrating the moments, because some days they are just brief moments, where we are floating, flowing through our day, together.

My son started kindergarten this year. I haven't written about that, because I am a weepy mama who is missing her boy and who is struggling to find a new rhythm at home with my girls.  Little by little, we are finding those moments of flow in our rhythm of chaos.  My favorite moments have been our walks down the road to meet the school bus at the end of each day.   The girls load their buggies, one filled to the brim with babies and puppies, the other a carefully selected stuffy and together we walk the 500 feet to the bus stop. We leave fifteen minutes early each day so we can take our time, popping jewelweed seed pods along the way and trying to catch the first falling autumn leaves.  This is our new rhythm, as we find our way, flowing through days one moment at a time, together.