Going Fourth

We spent the past several days toggling between two types of celebrations, getting together with friends and family, adding our beach towels to the others spread out like patchwork around the neighborhood pool, later skipping the crowd and spending the evening gathered around our own backyard table.  Next day dipping our hands into communal coolers again, grabbing whatever random scooter was available to keep up with the kids down the block before heading back home for popsicles on the front porch.  Picnics at metro parks, donuts at goodie shops, early morning church services and afternoon naps, cousins and cookouts and too many treats balanced with the regularity of bedtime books and morning snuggles.

At one point I worried about whether Tucker was fitting in with new friends his age, watched him talk about addition facts and share the molted exoskeleton of a beetle while the other guys tried to explain the rules of First bounce fly, encouraging him to join their game.  

I painted my nails and made fresh basil pesto, skipped folding laundry and read a novel instead.  I struggled with limiting myself to one gooey strawberry bar, with letting the boys stay up really late, with seeing her in the sky, bright red.

Through all of it though, the big gatherings and the small family huddles, the rest and the hustle, the ungrounded fears and faint anxieties, flashes of thanks crackled at the edge of my heart and a ferocious tenderness burned in its center.  I think the feelings, all of them, add up to something very much, if not exactly, like hope.