endless

(More from the freshly discovered Whimsy archives...)

This is not the end. Your child is 2 months, 4 months, 10 months, 10 years. She is going to the potty, going to preschool, going to college, going to get married.

Your life is fluid like the rain. It comes down in great sheets from the sky and spreads over the landscape. Each piece of ground it touches is different: soil, grass, rooftop, purple umbrella. the rain falls and takes the shape of the object it touches, like you are taking the shape of those things you face today.

You are a mother, a sister, a friend, a daughter, a wife, a child. You react to each of your roles in ways you never imagined.

You work. In each timeframe of your life, you work. Your hands are your instrument: moving the keys of the computer keyboard, moving Alice's hands away from her face, moving the steering wheel of your car, moving files and sales figure projections, moving a lock of hair from Chip's face.

This is what your hold on to when you grow too attached to today, too enmeshed with the possibility of what-may-come, too vested in now: everything that is precious today could be gone tomorrow. It's the movement that is constant, not the size of Alice's fist as she pushes it deep into her mouth or the particular way she has of rubbing her tired eyes with that same fist. Today she is a grasping toddler. Tomorrow she will be a teenager.

And you. You are more than the sum of your parts. More than the titles you garner and then shed. More than what you do. More than what you touch. More than what you leave behind.

It's all too much just like it's never enough.