On Mustard and Butterflies

Friday afternoon we drove to Danville to be on hand the next day for a joint birthday celebration-- my older brother's 40th, and my nephew's 15th. The drive down was quick and smooth, and included a rare stop at McDonald's and two firsts-- Silas' first Happy Meal, and the first time either kid had ever eaten dinner in the car. We cruised down 58-W listening to bluegrass music while Eva sang to her chicken nuggets and Silas ate fry after individual fry. "Mo fies peez? Okayyy!!"

The next day was bright and windy and we left the kids in the house with my parents and went for a walk on their property. There are 80 some acres, much grown up into impassible forest, but we skirted my great-uncles' old stone house to try and get in as deep as possible. The road that dips past his barns and milking shed isn't much of a road at all anymore, so we used my memory for navigation: turn left when you see the tenant house. Walk up the hill by what used to be a cattle pasture. Stop when it all flattens out; look for deer tracks, quartz, and mica. Listen to the sound of nothing man-made.

We startled a wild turkey who alternately flapped/ran away and charged straight at us. The three of us did a strange little dance for a while until we brushed past her. Then we walked home.

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The party was held in the parish hall of the Lutheran Church where I went to preschool. I guided my own preschool-aged daughter through the parking lot where I learned how to play Duck-Duck-Goose. We washed her hands at the sink I remember being too short for. When it came time for me to fix her a plate, I asked whether she wanted mustard on her sub and remembered tasting mustard for the first time in that very room. My class had been sitting in a circle with our hot dogs, and every other kid asked for ketchup. I asked for mustard instead and remembered being determined to like it because nobody else seemed to. It was a little bit tart and a little bit sweet: delicious.

I still eat my hot dogs that way.

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Today I sat in another church-- this time, the sanctuary of the Episcopal church where Eva attends preschool. The pews filled with parents and Silas squirmed on my lap playing with his plastic Spiderman. The children entertained in that timeless way that children do, some hamming it up and some stunned into silence and some just picking their noses, raising a joyful noise unto the Lord and their families and the hundreds of iPhones trained simultaneously at the chancel steps.

They closed with this song:

If I were a butterfly, I’d thank you Lord for giving me wings
If I were a robin in a tree, I’d thank you Lord that I could sing
If I were a fish in the sea, I’d wiggle my tail and I’d giggle with glee
But I just thank you Father for making me, me

For you gave me a heart and you gave me a smile
You gave me Jesus and you made me your child
And I just thank you Father for making me, me

Hey, "The Butterfly Song," I thought-- I learned that in preschool, too! The way the words came back to me, it was like I was four all over again, laughing at the funny parts, reaching up to pat my own "fuzzy wuzzy hair." And I looked down at my hands, which are far from the size they were at that age, and I watched my daughter singing with her classmates, and I felt a little of the cruelty and sweetness of time. How they're all mixed up together all at once, tart and sweet together like mustard. Wondering which bit of today she'd save until it leaped up all at once to take her breath away while she watched some little girl or boy dance and sing and giggle, some undetermined time down the road.

Would I be there, too?

(And I decided that yes, I would, even if it was in some floating, impossible angelic-Grandparent-on-a-cloud way like in those Family Circus cartoons where PJ never says anything and there's a dog named Barfy.)

Mostly I just live my life and get anxious about things, and sometimes frustrated, and then calm down and enjoy things until they jam up again, but sometimes there's a moment of clarity so fierce and so set apart that it becomes perfectly clear, abundantly clear, that time is marching on. That this is the time that we've been given. That today Eva will sing, and tomorrow she'll be in the pew, holding her own squirmy toddler, and there's nothing I can do except catch this moment and hold it and then blow it like a kiss out into the stars where every other moment like this one hangs suspended, and remember. Always, always, always remember. And be thankful.