Parachute man, drop me a line!

photo credit

You know those parachuting army men that you send flying into the sky on the Fourth of July? The pea green ones with the parachute that's a cross between a Walmart bag and the poncho your mom keeps in the side door of the van? The ones that are sometimes duds, but when they actually ignite and open and glide down, you run all over your dead end street searching for them in your neighbor's steeple-tall pine trees, narrowing your eyes in the twilight? And when you do see them hanging there, looking a little sad and droopy after such a heroic fall, you grab sticks and climb onto your dad's shoulders and yell things at your brothers like, "That's mine! I can TELL!" so they don't knock it out of the tree before you do. You think about what it would take to scale the trunk of a pine tree, flexing your decade-old muscles a bit to see if you're up to it, measuring just how much sap would be worth the victory of nabbing the parachute man first.

And when he's in your hands at last, there's a little letdown because he suddenly seems so small and his parachute (if it's in one piece) just sort of drags behind him like a pet rock. Why do we only think about parachuters with their chutes open?

But then your dad gives you that look, the one you know can only mean a good thing's about to happen. And he takes your men and runs inside to the second story and opens the window and you look up--chicks with beaks open--and there are your men swaying down to you, their chutes open. And the world is as it should be--hopeful and expectant and exciting. For the next three seconds, at least.

I still need parachuting men in my life. Not the actual hot-model ones (although that wouldn't be too bad either). I need the figurative parachuters, those people who've been above the trees long enough to have the lay of the land. I'm down here on the ground trying to explain to my son why it's not okay to pee on my shoe and finding creative ways to work vegetables into meals and having dance parties to Disney songs and a lot of days I feel like I'm desperately looking into the sky for a parachuter, someone to bring me a word of perspective, and someone to tell me I'm heading in the right direction.

I recently read a quote by E. L. Doctorow (I have no idea who he is, but Anne Lamott quoted him, so he must be okay. And a quick Google search reassures me that he's a well-known historical fiction writer. And he has a killer last name, so he's completely reliable). Anyway, my new friend E. L. said, "Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights but you can make the whole trip that way." Sounds like good life advice to me. Especially if you're a mom of young kids. Because most days all you can see is what's right in front of you: the skinned knee, the timeout, the laughter around the table, the bath time silliness, the made up songs, the pee on the shoe. It's all so close up that you have no sense of whether or not you're actually heading in the right direction (whatever that is). Which is why I'm learning I need to have people in my life who are on the other side of young motherhood and I need to listen to them.

I was at the grocery store the other day with my kids, who actually love grocery shopping. As we were checking out, a woman behind me said, "You're in such wonderful season." I knew what she meant; I'd heard it before. "Thanks. I think so too," I said with a smile, but I was thinking: Yes, I know, they grow up so fast and I'll miss all the fingerprints on my mirrors. I'm supposed to take this all in. But it's really hard to do that, lady. Even when I think I'm taking it all in, time still seems so slippery. 

She continued and I braced myself for the sentimental "My kids are all grown now" chat, and while she did go there, she also gave me some words from the great beyond that while I knew were true, were hard to believe in the I-have-my-kids-at-the-grocery-store-at-4:00-on-a-Friday moment I was in. She said, "My kids are teenagers now, and I remember when grandmothers used to come up to me when they were little and give me advice, but now I have advice of my own: Raise your children in the Lord, and raise them in the church, and when they're teenagers and they don't want to listen to you, they'll have people in their lives who they will want to hear from."

It wasn't like a revelation to me or anything, but it was a timely reminder from the sky that what I'm doing with these kids each day is about a bigger story than the one I can see and sense all the time. It was a reminder that there's a whole forest here made of these trees I'm among, and that while I can't see the whole, I can keep walking the parts, trusting that the parts are what make the trip so wonderful.