We sat around the table, me and my three.
We ate, we laughed, we argued, the dog joined in with his moans and groans, we recalled moments and memories from days gone by … yet alive in our shared memories.
My heart heavy, and light. My eyes … my eyes wet looking at these three, my three.
It was an evening of reality, an evening of dreams … dreams I thought might never become real, concrete, alive.
As we sat, and ate, and talked. As tales were told, as laughter flowed, as frustrations boiled … boiled over all over, messy, tense … real. I felt alive in the moment, alive with these three, borne from me, real and blunt, harsh and gracious.
For I would rather this icky and sticky, this dark and twisty reality, than one fine and flawless, sleek and shiny show … without any one of you.
I got what I asked for … and more.
One, one child to birth, one child to raise … was the dream back in the dust-covered past.
From my prayer, God blessed … and blessed … and blessed again.
I dreamed of real. Not perfect, polished and poised. I dreamed of sincerity … red hot, dented and sometimes stinky sincerity. I dreamed of this thing called community, family.
I dreamed of a life where the truth would be laid before them, not stuffed into them. Where the answers were not spoon-fed, but the tools to find them were at their finger-tips, that the instructions that we gave them were saturated in a love for them that could only come from the One who is love.
And as I crawled into bed, head and heart heavy with shared pain, shared struggle, shared life, I realized that I got what I dreamed of … the real thing, not a picture-perfect facsimile.
And that Jimmy Durante song played in my mind, as sleep surrounded me,
“Fairy tales can come true
it can happen to you …
and if you should survive
to a hundred and five
look at all you’ll derive
just by being alive.”
itsawonderfilledlife 