Despite consistently cold, sunny days this week, the weather in our household has been somewhat changeable, even paradoxical, leaving us unsure, at the end of this weekend, exactly which season we’re in.
Here’s a climatological analysis of some of the week’s events.
Sunny and hot
Feeding Lola has paid off and yesterday we got Cam his new ‘racing bike’ (which doesn’t race by any stretch of the imagination). He is deliriously chuffed, and though he tries to be suave and Lance Armstrong-ish, he can’t wipe the smile off his face. He’s riding like a champ and it brought tears to my eyes this morning because suddenly he’s a big boy on a real bike. Eish.
Cam regularly prays with me for one of my friends, that ‘Jesus would give her a husband.’ He’s obviously starting to connect the dots, because this week one of my St Alban’s old boys visited (he’s studying at UCT and he comes for coffee whenever he’s in town). Cam was thrilled because they get on really well. Before long, however, the conversation turned serious, and Cam began what I can only think was a screening process of sorts... He asked, ‘Uncle Adam, are you a grownup? Do you have a wife? Is Jesus going to give you a wife?’ I swiftly steered the conversation away from further interrogation, as Adam was beginning to shift uncomfortably. J
Bastille Day this week – Thursday 14 July – marked ten years since Murray and I started dating. We both forgot, and then remembered on Friday night. It’s actually pretty huge. An entire decade of love and adventure, and uninterrupted faithfulness. We’ll celebrate in style when we get a breather, and a babysitter.
Other patches of sunshine this week: very early mornings of groggy coffee and laughter with the boys in our bed, climbing and wrestling and giggling and snuggling. They are immeasurably cute and wonderful and I wish I could time-warp our hugs.
Cold, wet and windy
While being a mom is about ten times as amazing as I ever thought it would be, it’s also about three times as hard.
I remember being in Istanbul one day with my sister, and it was raining. We were soaked through but we knew there’d be a youth hostel and coffee and dry things, which almost made the feeling of being freezing and wet quite thrilling, in an adventurous, delayed-gratification kind of way. I’ve felt like that this week, except with no youth hostel, coffee or dry clothes in sight, which has been dismal and exhausting, and not at all thrilling. We seem quite beaten by the winds and stinging rain of hardly any sleep, relentless questions and tuggings and tantrums and naggings of play-with-me… On Thursday afternoon I just burst into tears. Scotty had a blood nose from slamming the bathroom cupboard into his face. He smeared poo all over Cam’s duvet because I’m not strong enough anymore to hold him down, and changing his nappy can be disastrously, well, crappy. Cam also smacked Scott through the face with a stick. I could go on.
Did I mention hardly any sleep?
Partly cloudy and warm
Scott’s eyes are bitter-sweet beautiful for me every day. I pray and pray that Cammy doesn’t feel the sting of oversight when people stop us in the shops to ooh and aah over Scott’s enormous, bright blue ocean eyes. And yet every day, with a very grateful heart, I ooh and aah over them myself.
Cam has started weekly occupational therapy with Samantha (his Aunty Manty, Murray’s cousin). I wish he didn’t have to, which is the ‘partly cloudy’ part of this weather report. And yet, the ‘warm’ part is that Samantha is a miracle worker, and Cam is making progress in the fine motor coordination stuff. I’ve never seen him sit so still, or concentrate for so long, or be quite so proud of a finished artwork! He made a (weird-looking) man and stuck bits of tinfoil all over it. I said, ‘Oh wow, Cam! That’s awesome! Is he wearing a silver spacesuit?’ He replied, ‘No, Mom. He’s wearing tinfoil.’
Other scattered showers and bits of cloud amidst spells of sunshine:
I had an exciting opportunity to co-lead a staff development session at St Alban’s this week. We had wonderfully positive feedback, but it left me in a state of emotional vegetableness. Then, we shelved our planned weekend trip to Clarens (which we’d hoped would include snow) because of an unpredictable petrol situation – but did still get to hang out with friends, and share in an engagement celebration and a birthday party. Always the bits of sun. J
Overcast with a chance of snow
The toughest, most wintery part of the week was Friday. We’ve had a few conversations with Cam about his eyes ‘not working so well’, but we haven’t been too sure what or how much he has understood.
Last week, Stuart and Tracy sent him the most beautiful book, from the UK. It’s called The Black Book of Colours and it’s an exquisite, multi-sensory expression of how a blind person experiences colour. Cam loves it! He asked me to read it to him over and over on Friday afternoon. We got chatting, and I explained that Thomas, the book’s character, is blind. We’ve never used that term with Cam, and I explained what it meant. The edited highlights of the ensuing conversation (which was scattered across the afternoon, and repeated at various intervals) went something like this (though I was even less eloquent than I sound in the transcript, and my voice sounded super weird because I was crying but faking a crazy, excited, encouraging voice…?!)
Me: You can see colours, which is so amazing! But, you know, your eyes don’t always work so well, sometimes…
Cam (quite indignantly): My eyes work very well ‘cause I went to Uncle Jacobus. (Dr Jacobus Pauw is Cam’s ophthalmologist.)
Me: Ja… But, like, when Scotty was born he could see straight away, but when you were born you were actually blind like Thomas. Then Uncle Jacobus did operations on your eyes, and Dad made you contact lenses, and now you can see very well! Except sometimes you can’t see some things that I can see, but then you can hear things that I can’t hear, and you’re so amazing and you’re so very good at so many things… (bla bla bla – Mom-type speech)
Cam: But my eyes work very well. Except I can’t see so well when I’m not wearing my lenses.
Me: Ja. But we just take them out at night so your eyes can rest nicely when you sleep…
Cam (after a long pause): Am I a bit blind?
And so it went. Snow falling softly on infancy and innocence and invincibility. I think he really knows now. Which is kind of freeing, because it gives us more of a platform to love and encourage and support him, but it’s opened up his heart in a new and dangerously vulnerable way, too. It had to happen sometime, I guess, and how amazing that God planned for it to happen over a beautiful book – a gift – and at home on a Friday afternoon, on our bedroom floor, with Scotty clambering over us and Lola sleeping by the heater. God knows all about the storehouses of the snow, and he is also our fortress where we will never be shaken (Job 38, Psalm 62).
… Earth stirs in her winter sleep
And puts out grass and flowers
Despite the snow,
Despite the falling snow. – Robert Graves
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