This beautiful book has taken me longer to read than most. I savored the words, the emotions, the heaviness of the book in my lap as I underlined and starred passages. Katrina's words about living an intentional life and the journey she has taken to do so, have been with me the last few days.
I admit that this book hit home on so many levels. Katrina talks about parenting through adolescence, and from her words I could see a bit of my future. Mothering a teenage boy {she has two sons, so while Paige came to mind a few times, thoughts of Fynn, and similarities shared with her oldest son, were front and center}... the challenges and joys that come with letting go. But also I was reminded of those years and moments that I push out of memory, when I was a teenager, that I have yet to look through as a parent of a teen. The sympathy for my mother, the understanding and appreciation, welled up and leaked out of my eyes several times.
Finally, there was the issue of home. Of space and of feelings. One that I struggle with, especially now as our count down has started... in six months we'll be in a new place. Probably small, though hopefully a little roomier. It's an unknown right now. We have the date our lease is up, and an idea of where we'll look to rent next, but the unknown is looming overhead. Timing. Again, so many tears and emotions were conjured from Katrina's honest and lovely book.
Today, another Saturday that Lucas spent partly at work, the kids and I went on a morning hike to one of our favorite spots. And we soaked it all in. The background for me was not entirely made up of fields and train tracks and leaves on the brink of changing. It was made up of tearful moments of realizations that this ordinary day is quite beautiful in its own right...
"The hardest part of being a parent may be learning to live with the fact that there are so many things we simply can't control, so much of the journey that is not our doing at all, but rather the work of the gods, the unfolding of destiny, fate. We give birth to our children, we love and cherish them, but we don't form or own them, any more than we can own the flowers blooming at our doorsteps or the land upon which we build our homes and invest our dreams. We may tend the garden for a while, take our brief turn upon the land, nurture the children delivered into our arms, but in truth we posses none of these things, nor can we write any life story but our own."
"If motherhood has taught me anything, it is that I cannot change my children, I can only change myself."
"There is, I remind myself, no more direct pathway to peace, no simpler way to encounter beauty, no better way of slowing down, than to try to practice devotion right where I am, doing each day's tasks as they come and building a life around what is already here."
"Maybe this is what I'm meant to understand during this slow descent into winter and all the changes that lie just around the corner. That there is no such thing as a charmed life, not for any of us, no matter where we live or how mindfully we attend to the tasks at hand. But there are charmed moments, all the time, in every life and in every day, if we are only awake enough to experience them when they come and wise enough to appreciate them."
Today, another Saturday that Lucas spent partly at work, the kids and I went on a morning hike to one of our favorite spots. And we soaked it all in. The background for me was not entirely made up of fields and train tracks and leaves on the brink of changing. It was made up of tearful moments of realizations that this ordinary day is quite beautiful in its own right...
I'll leave you with some of my favorite passages from a book now well marked and loved, a few pictures of my silly kids, and I encourage you all to check out The Gift of an Ordinary Day.
"The hardest part of being a parent may be learning to live with the fact that there are so many things we simply can't control, so much of the journey that is not our doing at all, but rather the work of the gods, the unfolding of destiny, fate. We give birth to our children, we love and cherish them, but we don't form or own them, any more than we can own the flowers blooming at our doorsteps or the land upon which we build our homes and invest our dreams. We may tend the garden for a while, take our brief turn upon the land, nurture the children delivered into our arms, but in truth we posses none of these things, nor can we write any life story but our own."
"If motherhood has taught me anything, it is that I cannot change my children, I can only change myself."
"There is, I remind myself, no more direct pathway to peace, no simpler way to encounter beauty, no better way of slowing down, than to try to practice devotion right where I am, doing each day's tasks as they come and building a life around what is already here."
"Maybe this is what I'm meant to understand during this slow descent into winter and all the changes that lie just around the corner. That there is no such thing as a charmed life, not for any of us, no matter where we live or how mindfully we attend to the tasks at hand. But there are charmed moments, all the time, in every life and in every day, if we are only awake enough to experience them when they come and wise enough to appreciate them."
**side note... Fynn's shirt says "Fight Pollution" - not just "Fight" as it appears in a few of the photos... yes, I feel this should be in bold lettering!!*
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