A few weeks after learning I was pregnant with our second set of twins, I scrawled this quote by Mary Oliver onto our kitchen blackboard:
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your
one wild and precious life?”
It eyed me from the blackness as I came to terms with our new reality. I would soon be the mother of 5 children ages 4 and under. I worried and fretted over how I would manage, but every time I walked through the kitchen, Oliver’s words calmed me. Five in four years. What could be more wild? What could be more precious?
After years of infertility, my husband and I were determined to embrace this gift. One child was miraculous, but a family explosion of five, with the oldest turning 4 one week before the last two were born?
God has a way of giving us what we need when we least expect it.
Our family life was extremely insular for a number of years, but it was also replete with wild wonder and precious minutes, each one sliding out of my hand so fast I didn’t have time to examine it. Everyone is older now, and possibly wiser (although most behaviors indicate otherwise), and the house is still wild.
Some days I miss the beauty, whisk past the meaning. But this is my attempt to hold time, remember to laugh, sift out what matters, and write to understand. I won’t get it all. As David Wilcox says, “There’s too much view to capture when we stand on sacred ground.” But I’m fool enough to try.
Doug has my heart – for loving all of me, loving God, and embracing the journey we are on. I adore my children – Eliza, Alexandra and Samantha, Spencer and Gordon. Next to them, I love a few other wild and precious things – like disappearing into a good book, reading poetry, hiking to the top of a peak, standing at the edge of the ocean, eating oatmeal chocolate-chip cookies, and dancing as a family (all seven of us) in the living room. You’ll find a smattering of these things mixed into my posts. Thanks for visiting. I’m so happy to have you along.
Cath