I’m in a bit of a writing slump. It happens often when we struggle to read, dream, or live that which inspires; when one overworks old veins, or tries to force ideas and themes by power of will rather than tell a simpler story that wants shared. I’ve found, sometimes, the best stories/works we write are ones within us, not by our own imagining—just there—and we tell them as they are without trying to make them more. They appear complete without us even seeing them at all—write fluid and natural, just as they are—if we write them as they show.
With that, I have no story today. Still, I want to write.
Audrey and I are going shopping today for Bridgette and her brothers. It is something we do every year. It is time and experienced shared, and a chance to be just the two of us.
Something I rarely think about, when it seems I’m always around and sharing time with family; in a home of five, how often do we really share in time with our children one-on-one? For all the time we are there, side by side and present, we are often in our own separate worlds of mind, or existing in the greater family dynamic or cultural collective when out and about. Rarely is there time and presence as just us, the two of us.
It is special when it comes.
Like my sister to my own father, she knows better than me what others want or would like. She cares more about it, and helps me through my own indifference toward most of what is material (I like good boots and not being cold in winter; outside that, for clothes, style, and fashion, I really don’t know or trouble to care. While economic for self, this is a poor quality as a father of middle-school children where such becomes a metric for placement on the rungs of social and popular castes).
She knows better than I what her mother and brothers want. She finds the gifts, shows me, and I say “Yes.”
It works well.
More important than the gifts, though, is our time. Time shared, the chance to listen, better see and hear what I do not when world and surroundings are more than just us.
She is becoming a young lady. It shows in her maternal instinct with her younger cousins, the way she helps in the kitchen, takes care of me even when I don’t think I need it (I will appreciate it someday—just as children do of parents in early years before lead and role of caretakers are inversed at some point and crux in life’s course).
She is only twelve, but already I dream and see ahead to a day when she is married. I hope he is a good man, one of faith, that she has a big family and that I am blessed to sit with them in a pew as we listen to the word of God, watching her struggle to keep order and quiet while, as grandfather, I usurp her efforts at calm with instigations of childish chaos—life—within the pew.
She’s asked for a Bible for Christmas. It’s probably the last gift I can really remember getting excited about, wanting it to be special for her. It was an element that made me think of a future family I hope she makes.
When personalizing, do I write her first and last, or first and middle, names. Won’t her last name change? I pray it does.
And then I think more.
I think of my wife. I think of her family in Maryland and of us in Missouri. I think how hard and emotional it is whenever we are together and then must say goodbye again. I remember how it was the same, when it was I that was there, and my family (parents, sister, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins) were here.
I have no idea who my daughter will become. I have no idea where it is that life and love will carry her, where it is they’ll settle down and make their home and own.
But I know that I will love her; and that I will miss her—these little moments that are ours.
Knowing, I make a point to be more present in our day; to love these moments as they live in our opportunities that are.
I don’t want to freeze time. I don’t want to slow lives; but I desire to appreciate all I am gifted to experience and share with the ones I love in the present as it lives.
Today, we are going shopping. I don’t care what we get. I just want to share it with her.
She asks me again and again, “Dad, what do you want for Christmas?”
She wants it to be special. It is. She doesn’t yet see—for me—this time and moment are the gift.
*****
I’m in a bit of a writing slump. But, still, I wrote.
I didn’t know what I would write. These words were in my heart. I didn’t force or try to make them more than what they were: just let them speak as they wanted told.
I let heart lead. Maybe that’s all writing really is.
Today, this is what it wished to say.