Right As Rain

I figured since I use this blog as a place to complain when things are not going right (right being--of course--how I want them, when I want them), I should also report when things are going right.  So, the following things are as right as rain:

• Spring came early this year, and I absolutely love it.  I have a love letter to spring saved in my drafts, but each and every time I sit down to finish writing it, I get carried away anew with my love of the season and have to abandon the effort and go outside.  I've even had to do this during a rainstorm, wrapped in an afghan, breathing in the rain smell, standing on my covered porch because we haven't put any porch furniture out for the season yet.  A short winter, and an early spring?  Mother Nature is a Goddess, and not the bitch I thought she was when winter first descended upon us.

• Remember the time change?  Spring ahead?  Well, I sprung ahead alright, and rocked the time change like it was the Casbah!  This was the fourth time change since my son was born (yes, I just had to count that on my fingers), and I was finally prepared for the fact that it would take his carefully calibrated schedule and blow it to bits.  And I was ready.  First off, I pushed his bedtime forward an hour so that it actually remained the same.  Then I let him sleep in as long as humanly possible every morning, waking him up right before I had to put him in the car to go to the babysitter's (she lets me deliver him in pajamas and feeds the kids breakfast and lunch before dressing them so as to cut down on clothing changes due to messy independent toddler eating!).  Then--and this is the kind of out-of-the-box thinking that ought to earn me a Nobel Peace Prize in Organizational Thinking (What do you mean they don't give Nobel Peace Prizes for Organizational Thinking!?  Fine, I'll take some sort of commemorative placard, both for my superior organizational skills and for using a tired corporate phrase like out-of-the-box correctly in a sentence.)--I worked an extra hour each day, for four days after the time change.  Then an extra half hour for the next three (okay, two of those were the weekend, but we put him down a half hour late for nap.  It counts).  And after a week, we were seamlessly back on schedule.  My son was none the wiser, my paycheck was slightly fatter, and I hope to be receiving a commemorative placard celebrating my accomplishments in the field of infant/toddler time change any day now.

• A dear, old friend of mine posted a Chinese proverb on facebook as her "zen of the day".  It said: Tension is who you think you should be.  Relaxation is who you are.  These simple sentences have brought me pleasure every time I think of them.  In my ongoing struggle to define God for myself, I keep coming back to certain things: the breath, committing and recommitting to my choices, the act of and the beauty in waiting, the work and transcendence in accepting, and the importance of joy.  This proverb wraps all of it up in a pretty little bow, and sends it right to me via facebook.  Thanks Universe!  And thanks Shelly!

• I sat in a rocking chair today, listening to lullabies, breathing in the sweet, sweaty scent of my toddler's head, waiting for him to fall asleep, watching slivers of silver raindrops through cracks in curtains sewn by my mother-in-law, and feeling blessedly relaxed, in no hurry whatsoever, and at peace.  And I thought: this is heaven.  And while having another baby will be its own heaven, it will necessarily preclude this one.  Why am I in such a hurry to trade this one in?  Why not just enjoy the one I've got?  And for a blessed moment, sitting in the nursery, rocking my boy to bed in the same rocking chair where I used to nurse him to sleep each night (sometimes feeling--or fighting--a mild panic/resentment, at the length of the nighttime commitment, at the uncertain end of what seemed like endless caretaking), it was that simple.  I experienced this extra time with my toddler as a gift, as this golden, shining moment without distraction.  And just then: everything was right.  Right as rain.