Last day being six...

Oh my child my love. Love for me began with you. You started so many things for me. Awakened things that were waiting, deep inside. You are the one who brought out the first silvery thread of my true nature with you in your tiny, yet sure little fingers.

Today you are six years old for the last time. The Moon will be full and at the closest point to the earth that it reaches all year. it just worked out that way for you my love on the eve of your birthday. 

This last year has shown you things I thought I never wanted you to see. You have had to flow with your grownups to new and uncomfortable rhythms and you have done this with such beauty and innocence. Six is so wonderful for it's holding of innocence. I loved six. Even though, I may have seemed distracted with the setting up of our new life, navigating sock drawers and carefully unpacking good honest values  and placing them into their  places next to the crisp folded handkerchiefs we get from the rose-bowl.

You sat in the back seat watching for when my eyes would shift up to the rear view so you could beam me a silly smile. Always happier when I am singing with laughter. I never missed the moments when you were tired of me and your thoughts like distant rolling thunder and darkening skies turned your face away and to the horizon. You have been through a lot my little six. You forgive what you don't understand and that is what we all do which comes back later for a talk.

I hope I'm there and we can offer some hot coffee and a doughnut to the old memories and sit with them a while. I wont be offended if they need to speak privately with you. We can even invite them to stay in our home. God is here and I think they will like our Angels and our ancestors cooking in the kitchen.

Six has been so resilient and so receptive to what it has seen! Six has tumbled and screamed like the gulls your father used to sing about. Six has both allowed and blocked confidence to pass, like the strange dance of a deep forest bird, prancing and flaunting it's bright and blazing feathers only to retract them and retreat in the same movement. Duality has been a theme for six. Coming and going. Happy and sad. Excited and fearful. Hopeful and despairing. Thank goodness for Ellie the elephant, soft and white, well, white-ish and with little curious eyebrows just like her person who finally attached to her this past year. Another blessing of six, because there's nothing better in the dark when you're scared than having an Ellie with soft ears and curious eyebrows.

Six has been a flowering. A blossoming. My little darling girl spent a lot of time watching and waiting at four and five and six has allowed the silly energetic girl back out to play. The one that loves babies and to laugh, wanting to tell the same joke over and over...not wanting the laughter to end. Six Loves to enjoy happy times. Six LOVES to see other people laugh and smile and be tender, so it has allowed my one of two to come back out of the waiting place and into nature to play with all the different ways to be. You have never chosen to be spiteful. Only when classmates are mean and you have so much empathy that you forget to get angry. Then you come home and have to spill the bucket a little. It's alright, I have so many kitchen towels, we can clean up the mess together and when its all out and you are tired and ready to return to yourself, plate emptied, I will stay up late and cook banana bread so you can have sweet smelling dreams.

Stand at the shore and wave goodbye as she sails off into the sunset to visit another starling! Say goodbye to six for me because I don't tuck you in on daddy weekends but in my heart. Thank her for me. She was so resourceful and forgiving of all of my bumblings and trials. I knew her well this time and she is burned into my memory almost like a tattoo of a timepiece. Six. When you close your little eyes tonight and the curious eyebrows are at last resting, mama will be thinking about you and six and how we all danced through the waves of life together. I am so grateful for every breath and every space that you fill in my presence.

I hope that six forgets some things in our closets so we can be reminded. I hope she leaves innocence for a few more years with us like a hand me down. We will wear it gently and pass it down to Sarenne. Maybe we can even keep it when you both are through with it and I will fold it up and put it in a pillowcase, a vintage one from the rose-bowl and keep it very carefully in a bin so we can pull it out for newborn rosebud lips, curious eyebrows and tiny fingers that grasp your golden thread to six from within you later on......maybe we'll do just that. 

Comments

[Rachanee]

Touch my soul with your feeling and truth. Beautiful way of tranlation your mind.

[will]

nice.

[Peggy]

I'm sitting at a restaurant in newport beach & I checked my email and saw your blog... As soon as I saw the title I knew I had to read it right now!! And as I read tears rolled down my cheeks.. The beauty of your words and the inspiration of "six" just melted my heart ... You are blesses to have such beautiful souls in your life but believe me when i say they are just as blessed!

[Laura Tinari]

Beautiful! I didn't know you were such an amazing writer.