Tenderness

Last week I was observing my daughter Piper (4) and it occurred to me she could benefit from a pause. Not her pausing, but my husband and I. She is a half a second behind us and we are two second ahead never meeting in exactly the right moment for her. Bath time defiance starts promptly after water is in the tub. “Piper please stop drinking the water,” I say. Tonight something different happened. Her cheeks were full giving me the impression of water in the mouth. I paused, I looked at her, no talking, cheeks popped and low and behold there wasn’t water in her mouth. The pause. We can slow down for her. I touch her cheek and say a prayer of thankfulness for her soul.

Thoughts shift quickly into other circumstances and I’m in front of Carol—teacher at Piper’s pre-school—she is describing the pause. “If we could just slow down, even the way we walk is fast,” she says. She bent her body as she talked to exaggerate the flow of “the pause” with an innocent grin on her face. How tender to witness!!

Passing my neighborhood I see someone walking very fast talking on his cell phone. He needs to slow down or he is going to miss the most precious spaces in his life, the space that can only be felt when in the pause. I pray he feels himself.

My chest fills up with breath and I notice the sweetness in my friend’s eyes while also hearing the drain in her voice. I wonder if she knows her value.

I notice the pain in my own voice as I say out loud while driving past a cemetery, “Dad I am very angry with you for not connecting, for not being present to me, for dropping off the planet and leaving me.”

I cry but desperately want to hide the depth of my feelings. I bear witness to the tendency to hold my own breath to avoid the self judgment I feel when I go deep into my anger. I forget to be sweet to myself. I acknowledge my own ability to disappear. I become vulnerable. I decide to consciously breathe having the courage and strength to stand in my own pain.
I expand into the miracle of my fragile self. I stay connected.
Piper runs in while Francesca is playing in the snow and tells me, “I found a butterfly. I thought it was fake.”
Show me!!
In the downstairs basement door runner was a beautiful tiger swallowtail butterfly in our house in the dead of winter. The internet said he should be hibernating.
Francesca prays to have an animal to pour her love into. Her prayers are answered. She feeds him, he crawls on her, and they share connectedness they pause, bend and flow together. He decides it’s ok to fly, he feels safe, transformation happens before my eyes.

MIRACLES.