Three reminders

Life has gone by fast lately. It seems the last four or five years have been nothing but a blur. There have been good times, that's for sure, but they seem to get lost in the whirl of day to day living.

But, in the last few weeks, I have found some remembrances of an earlier life. The kids were very young, I was probably in a state of perpetual confusion, but each one of them gave me their own views on life, words that kept me going even when I thought i did not even know myself.

Vinny- When he was in his twos and we had recently moved to Missouri for a job The Hermit took, I found myself floundering in depression, from living far away from family, from moving away from the life we'd built early in our marriage, and maybe some postpartum depression after giving birth to Nina. She was, by the way, a very challenging infant. Which will probably explain the quote from her.

in the midst of all this, I had an extremely intelligent and perceptive two year old son, who took it all in stride. One night when I was not at my best, he took one of those drawing tablets they have, the plastic ones where you draw things with a stylus and it can be erased wi a swipe. He drew a spider. An oval, eight legs radiating from it like sunbeams, and a smile on its face.

"I drew you a 'pider, Mom. I hope it makes you happy."

Oh Vinny, if you only knew. That spider probably saved me.

Now on to Nina, or as she was known in her infant years, Nina Sirena. She could grab your attention and drive babysitters to insanity. She was an independent gal from the start. When she was about the same age as Vinny was when he drew the sweet spider, I was trying to tell her to do something one day. I don't remember what it was. Anyway, she looked at me thoughtfully and said, "It's not MINE purpose. It's YOURS purpose!"

wow.

I did not expect that to kick in until the teenage years. And now that she is a teenager, well almost, it is kind of a relief that she got that out of her system early. We are pretty good at talking things out and negotiating.

And as for Joe, well, I have a photo of him, an analog, physical copy that I need to scan one of these days. In it, he is about two years old (why are all these stories seeming to converge on the Terrible Twos?), and he has a very thoughtful look on his face. His finger is crooked at the corner of his mouth, adding to the drama. "What shall I do next?" I wish I had it scanned now, so you could see the mischief on his face. It was about this same time in his life that he left a DeWalt lamp on the bed, face down turned on, and nearly burned the cabin down. The wool blanket saved us.

Three reminders, that, while I was going through times in my life that I thought were pretty tough, three reminders of what I was living for, and what kept me going.