Lightness

This is a picture I took of Felix at the end of a Tuesday we spent together. He likes these rainbow-colored gloves because he can put them on all by himself. Before bedtime, he stood brushing his teeth with one rainbow hand while waving at the mirror with the other.

We have Tuesdays and Thursday afternoons together, and today I was determined to just enjoy him and not worry about meeting time deadlines. These days Felix gets really upset when it's time to stop playing--get off the swing, park the Thomas trains, stop riding his bike--so we can get to the store /make dinner /get ready for bed. Even if we warn him ahead of time, he still mourns in his high-pitched wail when the fun is ending.

I can't blame him. How much do we tell ourselves to enjoy the moment? So I pushed him on the swing today for well over an hour, then we bought him a new bike with training wheels, his first. He didn't ask for one. He just had such a ball trying out the next-door neighbor's, and loves riding his tricycle so much that he pedals all the way to the library and back, which I think is over 1/2 mile round trip, that we wanted to see him on a bicycle. He rode it over to the neighbors' and again we spent as much time having fun as he wanted.

It was soothing for me. I was able to rest my spinning mind just hanging out with him. I started reading Eckhart Tolle's Power of Now, and it really resounds with me. I still am figuring out how to have Elise as a part of my life without letting the pain of losing her define me. I know her death has changed me, and in many ways for the better. But I want to access the peace I know is in me, bring it to the surface again and have it always at hand, just like she is always with me in everything I do.