I had all this steam. Was ready for a rant, of sorts. My thinking was I'd begin by listing out what I had accomplished by noon, really make someone marvel, and then end my geyser pout with something like, "Now, go ahead and tell me I'm 'just a stay at home mom'." And I might still write it some day, that piece that needs to be held up to the light of a society that has somehow now gotten the backward enlightenment that a woman is really only fulfilling her fullest potential if she turns herself inside out to work outside the home. After all, we can't ever really seem to get it, can we? That the "yououghto's" we throw around and dodge like spitwads in study hall are so little worth the spit and air that forms them.
But then, I read the heart of a friend spilled out in the recollections and reality of her blog. And she, in her characteristic pound-your-heart-to-pieces, no apologies way, humbled me. Shamed my steaming rant into a quiet whistle. And in this crazy, unanticipated, unintentional gesture gave me permission to BE.
May I explain?
Today, she kissed her dad on the head. His bald, aching, cancer-filled head. She wondered, as she drove to work about her kids at school and preschool, withthe sitter... She wondered about when her day would come to just be, sit, absorb, recoil, reflect.
I think about it. Pout about it. Envy people for manicured nails, not the polish, really: the time they had to sit through it. Waiting for the paint to dry.
And then something like taking a last breath, and not in some victorious, huge heroic way, but in that fist at the throat, succumbing to disease kind of way, makes me feel like an idiot for wasting any breath on defending my self, my positions, my wounded sense of time when I could have used it to form a praise or a blessing or a thanks or a laugh or a sigh of peace.
So I send her permission. She wouldn't take it, I don't think. Because God knows that if she took the time to Be right now, she might just have the breath squeezed right out of her. So maybe, instead, I'll send her a sigh, heavy with thought, thick with tears, but shining just enough with the glittering edges of peace, kind of like a sunset after a storm.