“Peace,” says my niece April, looking right at us, making a peace sign with her right hand. “Love,” she adds while forming the fingers from both hands into the shape of a heart on her chest. “Chicken,” she laughs, putting her fists under her armpits, pulling her elbows up to her shoulders and flapping her arms like a chicken. “Grease!” she yells snapping her fingers while swiping them across her face. “Peace. Love. Chicken. Grease!” we hear through cackles of laughter and much flapping, snapping and signing. Getting more and more animated, she goes through “Peace. Love. Chicken. Grease!” at least a half-dozen times bouncing around my mother’s living room like a cheerleader in the last inning of a football game.
Pretty soon we’re flapping, snapping, signing, smiling, and boogying right along with her. Yes, there was plenty of giggling too.
Big Papa and I contemplate whether there is any connection between ‘peace’ and ‘grease’ other than that they rhyme. But hey, if eating a fried chicken wing or two will beget world peace, call me a cab to Ezell’s as fast as you can. Or even a smidge of inner peace. I’d like to start there.
Seeing April’s exquisite pleasure in learning this new, it-girl of the moment rhyming cheer does, in fact, leave me feeling a bit more peaceful with the world. When I think about the reasons why I want to be a mom in the first place, this is one of them.
How easily we “age out” of these simple pleasures, a three-year olds fascination with the bug crawling across the floor or a seven-year olds obsession with learning the names and habits of every dinosaur in the Jurassic period.
On my trip to the east coast, I brought back my ‘Beth’s School Years’ Scrapbook, chock full of my Kindergarten through eighth-grade class photos and intimate details about my height and weight, new friends, activities, achievements and awards.
In the first grade I “learned to pronounce my S’s right” and how to swim. By third grade I hoped I’d grow up to be a movie star. My achievements in fourth grade included 26 push-ups in one minute, learning to play the violin and being able to hang upside down. As a fifth-grader I had by-passed my movie star aspirations and wanted to be a writer. Adult self…are you listening?!
While I take a certain pride in my kid-like ability to experience sheer joy from a visit to the farmer’s market or the way I enthusiastically embrace the first spring day over 60-degrees (Big Papa will tell you “Let’s go get ice cream!” is my sunny day late-March call of the wild), I know how easily I get bogged down with the adult responsibilities of daily life.
I go. I do. I go. I do.
Being a mom will entail quite a bit more of: I go. I stop. I sit. I watch the kid for awhile. I forgo doing most of what I’d meticulously planned on my “to do” list.
Some days I’m sure I will feel frustrated as I try to break old patterns of running hither and yon to simply sit by my wee one and read the same story over and over and over again. But I think, or at least I hope, there will be an equal number of days when slowing my walk to match the pace of my four-year old as he stops to inspect each and every crack in the sidewalk, is exactly what the doctor ordered.
At the end of the day, the moments when I stop and smell the roses, seem be the moments I remember most. And the small simple pleasures are the ones that really blow me away.
“Life is not measured by the number of breaths you take but by the moments that take your breath away.”
Martin says
Would you like to have one of the student desks that your father in law made? If you would, let me know, and we can arrange to ship it to you.