Once Upon A Time

Once upon a time, I updated here three times a week. I admit I feel a bit sheepish sticking my head out and waving after SIX MONTHS have passed. I guess this is the price one pays for a “late in life” baby added like a cherry on top of kids flung far and wide. I don’t feel too bad about this; my favorite blogger, Ginny Sheller, has done the same after her own little man made his way onto the scene.

I realized with a start today that it’s almost time to pick out our family Christmas card. Instantly, that led me to the question of who and what to include. Our granddaughter’s birth? Our son’s college graduation? Our two sets of newlyweds?

The bigger question, of course, is whether or not those are my stories to tell.

I remember when we were first married, and I thought that the lines were so clear. We were part of a larger family, of course. But first and foremost we were our own unit. How was it so hard for everyone else to see that? We began our lives as daughter and son, but the roles that mattered now were wife and husband, mother and father. And here I sit on the other side now, learning what it is to see my family tree branch off and blossom as part of the trunk, yes… but also, something more.

I am learning how to give both grace and space. I am learning to send recipes when requested. I am learning to allow my adult kids to be the separate individuals they always were, while seeing them, at the same time, as part of a new family altogether: their own.

All of this— all of it— is made more beautiful and yet more complicated by the six children we still have at home. We have two teenage boys at home, a pre-teen girl, two “little boys” who are no longer so little, and of course, Alice. Diapers and algebra, car troubles and new jobs, wedding invitations and acne. Oh, friends. It is a full docket indeed.

So it’s no wonder I have been silent here. What can I say? I can only share the stories that are mine, and so few of them belong to me these days.

Were they ever mine? Gosh, this is the bigger question. I think now that the answer is no. I think the greatest gift of this season where my family has gotten smaller even as it has grown has shown me more clearly than ever that my own vision is shortsighted and narrow. I thought I knew how to simply pull the stockings from the wall and hand them over to be hung somewhere else. I thought I knew how to allow my kids to send out their own Christmas cards. It turns out I don’t, but I will learn—because while they are such a large part of my story, I am only a small part of their own from here on out.

I relish the phone calls, the hours with one adult son still here at home. I relish the raucous moments when we’re all in one space and the noise is almost unbearable as so many voices compete. And all of it helps me appreciate all the more the window of time I still have left with these small people at home. Some day, the house will be unbearably still— just Christopher, Phin, and I. It won’t happen for many years but yes, it will happen if God allows it. By then, of course, so many stories will be in progress I won’t have time to even attempt to tell them all. Perhaps that is for the best.