The challenge of an empty page is minor in respect to the vulnerability of the one who decorates and illumines it with words, especially when done in a seemingly insignificant public forum as an obscure blog--but public no less. Exposure to one's own thoughts on paper or a blank screen is at times, brutal. This is known to anyone who keeps a private journal. To choose to expose oneself may entail limitations on what is written. Necessary, this is to spare the reader the excessive detritus of our lives. To engage in such cluttered prose is unfortunate when our brains cannot adequately engage our bodies to write fast enough to produce on paper (or a screen) the words that come unrelentingly to our minds. In that failure, as it seems, we feel much is lost in what was meant to be written. Perhaps not.
Still, some things are too precious to allow a type of censure that restricts the honesty of a moment when joy breaks through. I had that moment this morning when I returned an item to my daughter's room. I noticed the "pillow pet" on her bed. She told me yesterday her dad wasn't too pleased when she cajoled him into buying it. "Cajoled" was not the word he used when he told me the story. Seeing the red shaggy eared dog, with little red hearts on his white belly, I couldn't help but think of the heart of this girl of mine. Tucked between the wall and mattress, there is stuffed blue bear, a brown one, and a tumble of bright blankets. She sleeps in a cold room in our house, a room that gathers ambient heat, and sometimes I can hardly find her in the tangle of her bed. But this latest addition to her sleeping environment is its own kind of warmth in the world of a 15 year old that has cold and tearful lessons for her, the kind that erode large pieces of childhood innocence. These are her earliest, no doubt.
As the youngest of five, this precious one, has known a mother different from that of her older siblings, not intrisically, but stylistically, I suppose. She is bright and tough in ways that they are not. She is cautious and reserved to degrees they don't exhibit. Though there are "family resemblances," each child is as unique as each of us, a mother just sees this in ways others do not. Each child of mine decidedly had a different "mother" in me, more likely invoked by their evolving personalities, which in turn evolved mine. My adventure in parenting is more than 27 years in the making, and it brightens as it mellows, sharp and subliminal at turns. This evolution of souls, theirs and mine, and now that of a young woman in a world that can be achingly cold is a marvel to behold. I remind myself that we are all "works in progress." Souls, each and all of us, are evolving in a universe that is purposeful, meaningful and created in love. This universe renders a stuffed toy to warm a young girl's heart, but it also engenders a moment for a mother to reflect the preciousness of knowing the heart's need of a child, her child. Her father understands this too.
In raising five children it is often difficult in the "now" of any challenge to ponder the important work it is and the cosmic value that it has, much less the imperative to try to do it well. When you have the opportunity to ponder--and despite the intensity of any given moment--you do have that eventually, it is an affirmation that you have done reasonably well if you find joy, meaning, and relevance. At times I get caught up in the many failures, the small regrets, the moments that I let pass without seizing or reflecting. Of course, being reminded of them by my children can magnify them in my mind, but that keeps me humble. And humility is the key to joy, and the best way to approach the blank screen.
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