savor the living
It’s time.
I glance at my watch and sigh, not ready to stand, not ready to gulp the last of my coffee and sit the mug by the sink, not ready to see Kevin off to work, not ready to help Adam brush his teeth. Not ready. Never quite ready.
Upstairs, we stand in the bathroom together, me with the toothbrush in hand, Adam grinning, his eyes bright with mischief. Adam loves a game, loves to laugh, and that part of him comes as a gift for loving long, for loving well past his inability to use words well.
“Are you ready?” I ask him, smiling, knowing he has found humor in the question.
He tries to seal his lips together, but the tighter he presses them closed the more his smile betrays him. The corners of his mouth come apart against his will, and joy rushes out in giggles. He hates brushing his teeth, has always been afraid of strange sensations in his mouth. So, he finds my question a bit absurd. No, he isn’t ready. He’s never ready to brush his teeth.
I move the toothbrush closer to his mouth, smiling still more, asking again.
“Are you ready?”
This time, he laughs, trilling out the end of some song, like a finale to the game. I suppose somewhere along the way, he decided that since we obviously weren’t going to give up on the clean teeth thing, he might as well figure out a way to enjoy it. For his sake, and that he might begin to remember the steps, all the places he has to brush, I launch into a silly song I made up, complete with sounds he echos to get his mouth in the right shape to reach the teeth in question.
“You gotta brush the outsides on the top, EEEEEEE, you gotta brush the outsides on the top, EEEEEEE, you gotta brush the outsides, OHHH, you gotta brush the outsides, you gotta brush the outsides on the top. EEEEE!”
Admittedly, I overplay the performance. I make my expressions large and dance with the toothbrush, and Adam alternates between echoing my crazy sounds and laughing. This morning, I speed up the song a bit, aware of the minutes passing. Today, there’s no time for Adam to take a turn, no time for me to guide his hand around to the back teeth.
We wet his hair, I ruffle it with the towel, and then I brush out all the sleepy bumps.
“Grandma and Papa,” he says, looking at me in the mirror. “Adam’s house.”
“Yes, Grandma and Papa are coming to Adam’s house. You’ll see them when I pick you up from school today.”
“Grandma and Papa’s house,” he tells me, blue eyes pressing into mine.
“I know. I know you want to go back to the beach. Right now, you need to put on your tennis shoes and socks.”
I check my watch again. We should already be in the van.
I hand Adam his shoes, untying them so that he will not skip the step and force them on his feet. “It’s time for school, Buddy.”
It’s all I can do to stand there waiting while he slowly ties loose bows, bows I know he will have to tie again. He is precise with his loops, but he never tugs them tight enough. I want to interrupt and do it more quickly. I want to double knot so the bows will stay. But I know that my impatience will only stifle his independence.
Shoes tied, I motion to the door. “Let’s go!”
I lift my voice as we hit the stairs, calling to Zoe. “Zoe, are you ready?”
I hear the light sound of a response as she moves to the door, gathering her book bag, her lunch.
In the doorway, Adam stops abruptly, and I crash into the back of him. “UH, Adam?” And then I realize. He wants to push the garage door opener, wants to stand there, happy, while the door lifts. “Go ahead,” I tell him, checking my watch, knowing that some things simply cannot be hurried.
He pushes the button and stands, flapping his arms, blocking the door, until the door hums up along the length of its track and comes to a stop. I don’t know why, but he loves doors that open and close automatically. It’s as though he never tires of savoring odd things, things the rest of us have long forgotten and taken for granted, like the idea that a door will open right in front of us, that the push of a button brings opportunity to life with a satisfying hum.
Once the door has ceased to be interesting, hurry sets in motion once more. Adam climbs in the van, shutting his door too lightly, so that it’s closed but not all the way. I am used to this, and this I cannot leave undone like the shoes. I pull the handle and put more force behind the closing, watching Zoe walk around the back of the van to the other side.
In the tree, just beyond the garage door, she spots the bright orange flash of butterfly wings. She drops her book bag and walks in the direction of magical flight, whispering loud. “MOM!!! A butterfly!”
I swallow my rushing, impatient tone, the sounds of the words dying in my throat.
“I see. How beautiful.” I say this, but the beauty escapes me. Mostly, I am thinking about minutes. Minutes passing.
She kneels, trying to watch without disturbing the butterfly, trying to hold on to a moment. In the van behind me, I hear the hum of the automatic door on Zoe’s side. Hmmmmmmm. Click. A brief pause. Hmmmmmmmmmm. Click. Another pause. Hmmmmmmmm. Click. I sigh. The one sits motionless, gasping at elegant beauty, the vision of redemption; the other—I know without turning to look—sits flapping, watching a door spring to life, open, closed, open, closed.
“Umm, Zoe? We really must go or we’ll be late for school.”
She sighs, disappointed, but moves toward her book bag, shrugging. “Oh, okay.”
We climb in the van, and I look back at Adam. “Time to stop opening and closing the van door, Buddy. It’s time for school.” He says nothing, just sits back and looks out the window.
And all the way to school I’m wondering why I must be the one to push this reluctant routine, why I must insist on respecting time, why it’s my job to watch minutes pass and worry over the passing. Why is that my role, when I never quite feel ready to gulp, to rush, to go?
Sometimes I think that all the years—so much minding time, so much having to watch the minutes—rob us of the ability to truly savor living.
It isn’t until now, when I sit writing, enjoying the feel of words, the taste of them, that I realize all the wisdom bound up in the hearts of children. Only now, do I know why God says that the kingdom belongs to such as these (Matthew 19:14).
My children live, really live—wildly, passionately, wondrously—outside of time. Only now, when I’m not watching minutes pass, do I truly see the brilliance of finding laughter somewhere deep in all the have-to things, all the things for which I am never quite ready. Only now do I see the sculpted butterfly wings, flitting through my mind, captured in that glance; only now the brilliance of the color painted there, the vibrance flitting through rustling green, the leaves bent by the breeze. Only now do I see the wonder wrapped up in a tiny thing like pushing a button and watching life hum, opened wide.
And it seems to me at last that gratitude, born of savoring now—truly tasting this moment, overflows in hearts finding life far away from the boundaries of time, finding all hope in ceaseless eternity.
This reminds me of a chapter I loved in Ann Voskamp‘s book, One Thousand Gifts, a chapter she titled a sanctuary of time, a chapter in which she journeys through this shared sickness. “The hurry makes us hurt,” she writes, and “hurry always empties a soul,” and when at last God helps her to see, she writes of what I feel now, so deeply:
I speak it to God: I don’t really want more time; I just want enough time. Time to breathe deep and time to see real and time to laugh long, time to give You glory and rest deep and sing joy and just enough time in a day not to feel hounded, pressed, driven, or wild to get it all done—-yesterday (Voskamp, 66-67).
But savoring must be learned by those warped by the passage of time. It doesn’t come naturally to us anymore. We must make time for timelessness. And oh, how I want to relearn the joy of minding not minutes passing but moments worth feeling. I want to relearn the art of stopping, just a moment, to watch a butterfly. I want to rediscover awe in things that have grown ordinary. I want to learn to laugh, to find a game, to discover some joy in the things I’m least ready to do, that I might live deep.
Henry David Thoreau once wrote,
I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived (Thoreau, Where I Lived and What I Lived For).
So, this week I pursue some space—not the hours unheard of for mothers, but minutes, moments—to live outside of time, to run past the boundaries and savor eternal gifts–not irresponsibly, but deliberately. I want to list these lasting treasures, to touch the words, to remember that life flows rich and deep. I want to savor now for all its grace, while I can hold it in my hands.
