A Slant of Sun

Lola is in the tub with Ever down the hall, singing ' if you're happy and you know it ' and Ever is soaking wet and grinning and I know this because every time I check, I see the two of them, buck naked and splashing with their eyes glued to each other, singing. 

if you're happy and you know it

your face will surely show it

Life is so, so full. I have never been this busy, not even when I was a young single mother with Dakota, working with him by my side at preschool all day, going to class at night. There weren't three other children, a husband, a writing career, a blog, two dogs... This life is for real. It's grabbed me by the tits and won't let go. When I wake at the crack of dawn to the kids, the house, dog shit on the floor, a day ahead of me lined with corridors of work and dog hair and dinner and .... I think you asked for this. how do you like it? 

I remember how I forget the aching void. Before them. There is not a second to myself in the day unless i fight tooth and nail for it, and sometimes, there isn't a second anyhow. I was sitting on the toilet yesterday, head in hands, exhausted, a cliche of magnitude that I couldn't have borne when I was younger and way DIFFERENT than everyone; my hair long with a knot in the back, underneath, sweatshirt with avocado stains from baby's lunch, pits stinky because I forgot deodorant, dashing out of the house at seven am with three kids, worked all day, came home pulled down my pants and underwear my body went rebel and unloaded my period on the carpet, then waddling jeans around ankles, leaving crime scene evidence behind me for the three steps it took until I slapped my ass on the toilet lid and put my head down. And laughed. Almost cried. But I laughed.

You can't appreciate most anything until you lose it. You can appreciate it. But you can't appreciate it. Human beings are built this way. I liked my free time before. I enjoyed movies, books, silent moments lying in a slant of sun on the cotton sheets of my bed after being royally fucked by my one true love, eating a bagel in a coffee shop, listening to music without voices in the background, reading a paper, long hot baths, foreign films, hours to write in peace, ah. Ah. But I have never ached for peace and quiet in my bones like I do sometimes now, with four children.  There are moments when I feel if one more person asks me a question, I am going to tear my hair out and run screaming down the street, and all the neighbors will say how I never fit in, anyway. Moments, hours, where my skin tingles with nervous vibration, so overstimulated with touch, touch, touch. Mornings where the questions and whining and complaining and even singing are so overwhelming that I understand why small children bang their heads on walls when they are overstimulated.

And then I remember what I forget. How deeply meaningful life is, how much I look forward to silence and books and music and movies and my husband because of how abundantly, ridiculously, miraculously overflowing my heart and soul are with the lives and love of our children.  Because of them, I understand better the riches all around me now: the importance of individual human beings and their lives. How much less time I spend thinking now about 'the meaning of life' because I am too busy living in it. How I fall asleep and wake without that hollow feeling that was before my constant companion, but instead with the steady satisfaction that a meaningful life gives.  How I have laughed harder and longer over a two year old's escapades than I did stoned in high school. How the endless sacrifice and hard work are building my character. I have always wanted to be a hard worker, an unselfish, generous, loyal, unconditionally loving person; I guess I expected this to happen through divine intervention. Instead, it's happening through mothering my children. The work of becoming a better human being in the context of other human beings is not a desk job. It is blue collar work- it is ten hour days, seven days a week, put your boots on and take off your earrings. The baby will probably rip them out if you don't.  

And then I remember what is most important- I remember how I actually feel, all the time, the river that runs through it: I feel happy. I am so deeply happy, so entrenched in the solid ground of my family, that sometimes, I have to hear my children singing 

if you're happy and you know it

your face will surely show it

before I realize that I am happy, and I had forgotten what happiness was. Being of use and necessary to others, sharing laughter and appreciation of life's offerings, losing yourself in the work of life, feeling loving and loved.  Surface emotions flicker across life like fish scales on the ocean top.  You squint, focus on them, and they are soon gone. The fatigue, irritation, over-stimulation and constant motion of this work distracts me: but what lies beneath is the same slant of sun I miss on the cotton sheets of my bed: the happiness of love.