Obeing My Elders: Learning to Dwell

There are things that get said over and over

by those (the ancestors/elders/wise ones) who have gone before.  

If you're smart, you start paying attention. 

If you're really really smart, you listen for what's underneath the repetition. 

If you're uncharacteristically pliable you obey that. 

It's been happening ever since my first baby bump emerged

and doubled in frequency when my first-born came along.

Triple and quadrupled with my second pregnancy, then son 

who put sibling dynamics on the surface for all to see. 

They'd get hollow looking, 

like half their torso might crumble in the admission: 

Pay attention. It goes by so fast.

Literally: I've heard it more than a hundred times now 

as a mother of two. 

The church elders.

The pediatrician.

The extended family. 

Strangers on the street, lovingly gazing upon us before 

the wave of absence hits. 

It's become such a familiar sentiment,

lodged at me from the xers, boomers and builders,

that I can recognize it without them uttering a word. 

A single glance of nostalgia so loaded with mourning  

you begin wondering if carrying kleenex around permanently

is a good idea. And not just to wipe up baby puke.  

It's like "I used to be you, I used to have that. 

But what used to be little is now big somewhere 

and the bigness of my love for that small thing 

keeps growing despite its disappearnce. 

Feels like nothing is small enough anymore." 

I watch my daughter dance away from where I stand in the kitchen;

she's a mixture of twirling and running and crashing forward,

her calf muscles now mimicking 

the feminized, over-size curviture  

of some Diego Rivera painting

because she's been prancing long enough

for muscle to develop underneath the baby squish.

My son echoes his hunger in the background, 

evidence that synaptic connections have formed between 

his belly and his mouth and his innate knowledge

that I get him what he needs when he needs it and dares to cue me.  

There will come a day when her legs

and his hunger will take them away from me, 

and so already, because anticipatory grief is worthy of recognition, 

I head the warning of my elders (who too often believe I am not listening)-- 

that if you want to fall and stay in love with something,

without choking on regret later,  

you better give yourself permission to dwell. 

Dwell when the outter demands shout louder than your own soul.

Dwell when the tasks seem insurmountable.

Dwell when it feels like cheating every one else's time. 

Dwell like your very life depends on it 

because it does. Because it does 

in the smallest and biggest of ways.