In Just a Glance

I glanced in the mirror the other day while I was helping my daughter brush her teeth. Like electricity, a thought flitted through my mind. It was like a floundering spark there one minute gone the next, yet still hot to the touch. 

Just for a split second, in the time it took to take a glance, I was shocked that I was a mom of four. Me?  How?  When?

Sweeping the floor the kitchen floor one evening, a chore I repeat repeatedly, a thought like the wind blew through my brain.  Me, 38, domestic and with a family depending on me.  When did this happen? It is true?

Out in the garden, planting rows of corn, my mind wanders back.  I wonder what the boys in high school would think of me now?  Bare feet coated in garden dust, frizzy hair swirly around my beet red, moisture-beaded face.  I’m sure they would never have envisioned my future this way.  Can I?

How can this be?  When did time rush past me at the speed of light. How can my 14-year-old be way bigger than me when I held him in my arms only yesterday. How can I be as old as I am?  When did life as I know it happen?

Am I the only one who has these shocking, quick moving, stop you in your track thoughts?  They leave me speechless.  In a nano-second of time its like I’m standing outside myself and wondering how in the world I got where I am. Then just as quick I’m telling myself yes your life is your reality.

And this reality…I chose it!

So where does the shock of being a countrified,  homeschool mom of four come from?  I don’t rightly know.  But, time certainly is playing tricks.

Because only yesterday….

I was teaching preschool and knowing deep in my heart I needed to be home with my baby.

I had a baby on my hip and a toddler wrapper around my ankles.

I had a deep desire to live in the country.

I couldn’t garden big enough.

I started homeschooling (going on 10 years ago).

I became a momma again and again.

(photo courtesy of Megan Kunkle)

And then time swept me up, twirled me around and presented me with a growing, changing, more independent, no more diapers kind of family.

In those quick, spontaneous glances, I may be shocked now and then that I am a momma to four. Time seems to have slipped through my fingers like so many grains of sand.  The days are changing us.  Yet, in those glances, in these days, there is satisfaction.

I’m right where I want to be. I’m here by God’s design and that’s just fine by me.

Just don’t ask me about it in that mere nano-second…who knows what I’m likely to say!