Season of Strength

We have these two trees that line the fence in our backyard - we’re the annexed half of an old farm property so these trees, original to the land here are likely close to 200 year old maples. Their branches are long and wild, thin, reaching up from what was once the cluster of maple keys that got buried by chance and survived that first winter so long ago. Not cultivated by any hand other than their own, they’ve been growing upwards, wild and untamed ever since. When we have an ice storm, the trees will prune themselves, shedding a long limb that falls silently. Likely covered by the sound of the ice as it hits our windowpanes on a cold night in January. 

On a day like this in the spring when the sky is blue, you can focus only on the branches and they pop out towards you like network of roads against the backdrop of the sky; a giant map of grey on blue. And right now, the buds are just starting. They’ve done this every year since they were babies. Grown, bloomed, shed, slept, started over again. Repeat. 

Last night we had our first bbq of the season. We had spent the whole day painting our screened sun porch while the girls ran around pulling items out of our shed; making a make-believe patio restaurant, enclosed by the hosing from the backwash filter of our pool system. Their little imaginary world contained some old macrame folding chairs that mike’s parents brought over two summers ago, for our housewarming party. To them, this island of furniture was a pool-side cafe and you needed a star from an old Christmas decoration as your card to “get in” to their private and exclusive club. When I asked what was outside the pool hose, I was told that you had to stay inside the perimeter.  They had created a make-believe world you couldn’t step outside of. 

Kids love these small spaces. Curing up in a tiny square of cushions they’ve pulled off the couch; hiding behind a blanket draped over a table. The world they seek to make right now is small, enclosed and safe. It so different from how we think about wanting to be parents. To give them everything. To make them worldly. 

After this full day of creating worlds and restoring worlds, we all came inside together; famished and drooling at that first BBQ of the season smell. 

My spot at the table is opposite our kitchen window, so I have the luxury of spending my meals with the backdrop of those trees that never cease to reach towards the sky, rain or shine, fall or spring. Always magnificent. Always changing. 

And as I shift my focus to the room in front of the window, I see four faces staring back at me. One is full of ketchup from her dinner, belly full as she stands up on her chair motioning wildly for me to listen to her story, one is framed by a head of wild hair that’s been blowing in the wind all day as she runs around the backyard, licking whipped cream off of her spoon. Another searches the room for my eyes and squints with a smile as I wave across the table towards him. And at the other end of the table eyes, that mirror my own after a long day as parents of small kids. Ready for some quiet, but not just yet. Right now we are clustered. 

We are in a season where life for us is in a nucleus. We have been planted firmly in this place, we have slept and cried, and shed pieces of ourselves we thought we had to keep to be whole, only to find that once shed, we grow into the space that’s been left behind. 

Someday these faces will grow.  

The two-year old will sit still on her chair for extended periods of time and the four-year-old will need me still but she won’t be asking for constant approval or reassurance, she will have the foundation we’ve given her over years and countless milestones reached. And the baby will be a man. 

And I will be made up of this cluster. Still here on this fence line, rooted in storms. And in seasons of uncertainty. Part of the map, that on a day in the Spring if you squint your eyes against the blue, you can see how the branches touch each other. 

Dinner is over and we start the rush towards bedtime. To wash faces, and tickle little ones wrapped in towels, clean after a bath. To read stories before finally tucking them in under a pile of blankets they request in a specific order, at last turning towards the door with a final goodnight still hanging in the air of the room behind us.

We are on a road pointed upwards and outwards going nowhere specific but constantly intersecting and this is our season of strength.