"No...I just haven't had time and I haven't been inspired..."
"Well, you should."
And he's right. I've been making excuses to myself. The kids are mostly grown now. They probably don't want my anecdotes about them all over the internet. Especially Parker...I mean he's a teenage boy.
Fate has a way of bursting our myths.
The truth is I've been hiding.
Recent events have left me feeling sad and betrayed and questioning myself. So I have retreated from everything that would give other people a peek into my life. But the truth is, there are so many more people in my life who love me and want me and need access to my heart than there are those who hurt on purpose...or even unintentionally.
A friend who recently had her first baby said to me, "I wish more women would talk about ALL aspects of motherhood...not just the fun stuff." She is so right.
One day last summer Parker was peering out our back window through a pair of binoculars. "Mom! You have to come look at this spider!"
He knows I'm terrified of spiders, so he never misses an opportunity to point out a big scary one.
He handed me the binoculars. But try as I might, all I saw was the many trees in our back forest.
"I don't see anything."
He took the binoculars back and looked again. "It's right there. See right between those two trees."
I tried again. Nothing.
And then he reached over while I was still looking through the lenses and turned the focus knob a bit.
And like magic it appeared! A huge beautiful Charlotte of a spider! Hanging in mid-air on an intricately spun web. She had been there all along. I just had to have the right focus.
I try to make my blog about the spiders. The good stuff. I focus in on 5 happy minutes and make an entire story about it. And that is important.
But the truth is I have WAY more trees in my life than spiders. We struggle financially and my house is rarely clean and my kids do stuff like wreck cars and sing in bars. I let things go sometimes that I shouldn't because I'm too tired or lazy to confront. Sometimes I skip church. Sometimes my son gets detention and my daughter runs out of gas. I don't always like my kids. I don't always like my husband. I don't always like myself.
But if we didn't have those trees, where would the spider hang her web?
It all mixes together to make my backyard.
It all mixes together to make my life.
Today I want to see the spider...AND the trees.
2 comments:
Oh so you are human after all? Fonda dear, we love you warts and all. I don't know what Abbi would have done if she couldn't have called on you all those times. And I like to come to your house where I don't have to worry about a glass in the living room or making the bed first thing. I like it that we can sit talk laugh and worry about the clean up tomorrow. It means a lot to me. I love you just as you are!! And I miss you.
Teresa
Well, I'm so relieved. I felt like I was falling so short, and wondered where you came from! Ha! You are certainly the person from the song "The Warrior is a Child" that you used to sing. And aren't we all. Most of us just have to let our failures and faults glare for all the world to see. It's not so easy to hide, sometimes. But why do it? We are all somewhere in a process of development. MOM
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