Pacifiers in the street

Driving around we've all seen those objects in or on the side of the road that make us scratch our head in wonderment. Whether it's that random shoe or the soda pop bottle with yellow liquid that you really don't want to contemplate any further, people seem to lose the weirdest things out there on our highways.

Today after taking the kids to school I saw a pacifier in the road. It was blue. I couldn't help but wonder if that mother has been frantically looking for it to get her little baby to stop screaming, or if she has an entire passel of pacifiers back home.

To me, that pacifier represents not only everything I love about where I live, but also everything I love about my life right now. Funny enough, none of my kids have really taken pacifiers except for just a few months. But to me that lone pacifiers speaks novels.

This is my time and my season to be a mother. I am assaulted with this face and whining clawing hands and legs as they crawl up my body on a continual, persistent basis. Times two.

Now is my turn to spend hours each day helping with homework.

Now is my time to have a house of continual chaos and mess. I daren't ever think it's clean, because I will soon be proven wrong.

This is my time for carpools, and practices, volunteering in the classroom, loads and loads and loads of laundry, a gallon of milk gone in a day, stains in the carpet, diapers on the floor, headaches every night. Whining, crying, pushing, pulling, tugging, pleading, plying, begging, bugging....exhausting. (Right this minute Ziggy is assaulting me with a big box of fishies. Oh no, he doesn't want the fish, he doesn't want me to hold him, he just wants to hit me and scream at me for no reason that I can decipher)

Twenty years from now, when my boys are grown and gone, I'll wonder where these years went. I'll wish to go back for one more kiss and one more hug. I'll try to remember the quiet moments. The small things.

But I doubt I'll be able to remember Roo this morning. As he ran with all the 5 year old faith in the world to grab a dandelion. And while I'm thinking of those seeds spreading to our grass he's got that weed clutched in his hand...."I wish.....I wish....that every wish come true." And with his eyes aglow with the sure knowledge of wishes that come true, he blew those seeds to the wind. In that moment even I believed that he could make every wish come true.

I wish.....I wish.....

Hmmm....that's weird. I can't think of a single thing to wish for.