This morning I stood pouring hot water over a tea bag, my son quietly occupied with his toys.

My ears pricked at the sound coming toward our house, instinctively I ran toward my son, arms wide open, ready to embrace him as he rain toward me scream ‘Muuum’. His hands scrunched the shoulders of my shirt and his legs wrapped tightly to my waist. I ran toward the front window and we both gasped with excitement as realised we had made it in time…

And we watched the rubbish truck pick up our bin and swallowed the contents whole.

It’s in these small moments, hundreds everyday, that I’m reminded of the magic. Its here in the wonder and awe that I remember to stay curious, to stay ever present to these simple, sacred moments. 

Its their little marks on my heart that I’m working so hard not to take for granted.

The bin truck. The fingerprints on every door frame. The rocks and nature treasures stuffed into the cup holders in our car. The bowl of half bitten apples in the fridge. Even those. Sometimes its the duality of longing for the quiet, for the clean and orderly, for the mental load to stop. Simultaneously the longing for all their quirks to remain forever. Knowing, and grieving, the impermanence of it all.

Reminding myself when it feels heavy that the weight of it all is not the weight of my children’s needs, or the volume of their cries, it’s not their demands for attachment or their tendency to take up space. Its the weight of motherless-ness and the void where a village was supposed to be. It’s the weight of a culture that does not value the work of mothering, it’s the weight of isolation and time slipping through my hands like sand.

I visit my future self often. I go to her in my dreams and visions, I ask her for some patience and some wisdom. I borrow things like compassion and exhales. She tells me about how peaceful life is, how she longs for things I have. She looks at me with tears in her eyes and a swollen heart and reminds me it doesn’t get better than this. I thank her and I tell her I’ll visit again when things feel hard.

-Sarah