The other morning, I looked down at my hairbrush and saw a copious amount of grey hair in the bristles. As I was about to drift into melancholy mid-life reflections about growing old, I looked at the brush more closely and realized the grey strands were, in fact, blond American Girl doll hair.
Motherhood is a lesson in humility. But as much as I like to joke around about some of the more mundane aspects of my day, I’ve been doing this long enough to have reached a certain level of peace with the arrangement. In my case, it’s about whether I place crafting a well-researched report that will be published and taken seriously by many people on equal parity with making a pair of fairy wings which will be taken seriously by one five-year old girl. For a long time, I would have said no.
But not today, and in fact, not for a while. I chose this path and have received countless blessings because of it. Does time go slowly? Some days. It’s easy to take an ordinary day for granted, especially when it’s repetitive. You can find yourself counting the hours until bedtime. But to its extreme, that can turn into an exercise of wishing your life away, wishing their childhood away.
Today, I was the lucky audience for an impromptu dance performance by my two younger children. They leapt, they skipped, they pranced . . . they filled my heart. I watched with that heart in my eyes, hoping that the stars will always remain in theirs.
O Master grant that I may never seek,
So much to be consoled as to console,
To be understood as to understand,
To be loved as to love with all my soul.
Excerpt from Prayer of St. Francis
Rowena Zimmermann
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