Bigger Picture Moments: I Am Alone

Mama, do you see this?

It's our secret place.  There's moss on the floor, and a little clearing with a stump. 

Okay, I promise.  We won't go any further in -- you'll be able to see us the whole time.

But we have to be alone, okay?  It's our fortress...



And I am alone. 

The baby is asleep in a curtained room, the sisters are spinning adventures in their canopied glade, and I am alone.  A wind pushes at my eyelashes, daring me to blink.  Trying to force my eyes into letting go.

It's what I've been chasing all day, I think: silence.  The lack of being needed or called or required.  I've tried to create it with coordinated rest times and strategically placed videos, but it's been elusive.  Busyness crashed around my edges willfully.  Defiantly.

But the silence is here now, stuffing into my ears like a twist of squeaky cotton; instead of comforting, it irritates.  I want to step forward into the wildflowers and push aside the boughs of young trees to hear the secret world of sisters.  I want to lay a blanket in the winking sunshine as it drops behind the forest and lie next to a giggling baby boy.  I want to discuss nothing with my husband, focus on the timbre of his voice filling the sky.

The wind shifts and I am assaulted with honeysuckle.  Or lilac.  Or both.  A superhigh falsetto reaches me from the forest -- a wood fairy, maybe.  A slender wisp of loneliness curls around my neck, sending shivers dancing along my arms.  I know I should be enjoying this moment, backing away to the porch with a book or a sweating glass of iced lemonade.  I should be smiling at my luck: I've achieved solitude at last.

Instead, I stand rooted to the grass -- bonded to this moment as solidly as I am excluded from it -- watching and waiting for the neediness to return, when I will probably bristle at its touch.  I am inconstant and full of my own neediness. 

I am a mother.

I rest my hands on my hips and turn my back on the mossy fortress and the secrets of sisters.  I face the honeysuckle.  Or the lilac. 

And I am alone.





We're seeing the Bigger Picture through simple moments -- moments that force us to stop and take notice of the ways our worlds are important, meaningful, and beautiful.  Please join us here today! Grab the button, link up, and read a few others to encourage them as they find the fullness in the simple.