Wingbeats and Flowing Rivers

I am re-reading a favorite book, Mitten Strings For God by Katrina Kenison. A dear friend gave it to me when Mashuga was born and it has become a dear friend. It is a book that I come back to again and again and it touches me just as deeply every time.

Tonight I read a few chapters and finished by reading the last chapter, called "Wingbeats".

A few quotes:

"They don't stay still long enough for me to have my fill of them ever, at any stage. "Stop!" I want to shout. "Let's just do it this way for a while, let's just stay right here." But the movement is inexorable -- up and out, away, into the future."

"Sometimes, it seems, there are discernible changes overnight. The boy who meets my gaze at the breakfast table is not the same one whose cheek I kissed the night before. And even as I marvel at the latest incarnation, I grieve for yesterday's child, already a memory. To love them is always to let them go, bit by bit, day after day."

"In our own nest, I hear the wingbeats every day. I count off the years in my head until my boys will leave home, and I marvel at how far we have already come from those first days and weeks together, when it seemed infancy would last forever.... Each night before I go to sleep, I make my rounds, lingering as I gaze down upon those sleeping faces, wondering where their souls are while their bodies are at rest, and where their future flights will lead them."

I have been hearing "wingbeats" in my home lately as well.

Even our sweet little Jack, who is so new to us, is already changing with each passing day. We have loved him for only 13 days and already he is a completely new creature than he was when he came to us. He is so very different today than he was yesterday.

The change is even more pronounced in my older children. They are growing, changing, away, away, away...

It hurts my heart to see them go so quickly. Mostly because I know that I am not making the most of the short moments we have together. I take them for granted every day, capturing an ocassional moment of grace -- when I see them clearly and love them fully. Most moments of their sweet lives rush through my fingers much too quickly for me to grasp.

And perhaps motherhood is and always has been and always will be this way.

A river rushing on and on, while we flow with the current.

I cannot stop the water flowing. I cannot swim upstream to recapture moments past. But I want to clear a space where I can feel more deeply and appreciate more fully these beautiful souls whose lives are continually flowing around and through mine.