Letter about this day in time

Dear Cam and Scott

In the whole spectrum of eternity, today in our corner of the world was no big deal. It was a sunny, mild, Highveld day like zillions of others, before it and after it. It was just a dot on the long line of time, involving a tiny intersection of humanity – a handful of people amongst billions.

But in my heart I record time in unquantifiable measures and irregular cadences. Sometimes seconds intensify and swell into huge images that freeze, living, forever. There are whole months and years on my timeline that elbow for space and significance. And sometimes days and nights and weeks fly by in a blur of delight or discomfort or drudgery or danger, and they hardly take up any space at all. On that timescale, today was a little flashing LED light – a bright marker of small but happy consequence that I will come back to and remember and enjoy.

Scott-Scott, today was your debut at Heavenly Babies. You were so brave and cheerful! I intended just to take you to meet your teacher and see your classroom, but I ended up feeding you your maltabela and playing there with you a bit. You are the youngest of the fourteen children in your class. Most of your friends can walk already, but that didn’t seem to faze you. You’re faster on all fours. You have Nadea, Mabel, Monica and Irene looking after you. (They know Cammy, so you come highly recommended.) I left you to play for a while, and when I came back you were eating your Bovril sarmie in the sun with all your new mates, happy as a holiday. I was so very proud of you – a picture of quiet repose and contentment.

Cam, today was your first swimming lesson. You’ve been breathlessly excited and grinning for weeks, and I was a little afraid that when the moment actually arrived your hope might be deflated by reality and wetness. But your excitement only escalated, cozzie on et al. Once you accepted that I wasn’t going to swim with you, and once Tannie Lette got you in, there was no stopping you! You kept yelling out, ‘I’m enjoying my swimming lesson!’ and ‘I do swim like a fish!’ and you were dancing around wildly on the side of the pool when you should’ve been sitting like a lamb waiting for your next turn to paddle or float like a star. Craig is also in your class – he’s already quite a pro – and two impossibly cute little girls who must surely be in line for some kind of Best Toddler Edition Swimsuit Award. You might want to keep in touch with them. Climbing out the car when we got home, completely unprompted, you said quietly, ‘I had a wonderful day. Thank you for my lesson.’ Again later, in the bath and utterly out of the blue: ‘Thank you for taking me to swimming lessons!’

You have a fascinating way of expressing things, Cam. Tonight at supper you were banging your feet on the kitchen cupboard, and listening to the hum of the oven, and you said, ‘Look at the noises of those things!’ You’ve been doing a lot of bongo-drumming and rain-maker-shaking to Beethoven’s ninth symphony – always perfectly in time – which makes for an interesting arrangement. Tonight we also had two quite heavy theological conversations. Here are some fragments:

Cam: Mom, did God pin my body together?

Me: Yes, he made your body just as it is!

Cam: Why?

Me: [I gave the standard Psalm 139 kind of answer: God wanted your body to be just as it is – it’s perfect! He wanted you to be inside this body, and not in anybody else’s body, etc.]

Cam: Whose body isn’t perfect? If you climb out your body is it not perfect?

And then later:

Cam: Is Jesus still at heaven?

Me: Um… Ja, but he’s also here with us.

Cam: Is he here now?

Murray: Yes, he’s here all the time! He never leaves us.

Cam: I can’t see him.

Me: Yes, but even though we can’t see him, he’s here and you can talk to him anytime.

Murray: And when you go to heaven one day you’ll be able to talk to him and see him face to face, as if you’re talking to Mom or Dad.

Cam: Who is Jesus?

Me: God’s Son.

Cam: No. Jesus is God.

Nothing like a light discussion of the Trinity over roast veggies.

Scott, you were already asleep when this conversation was going on, because by six-thirty you can barely stay vertical. You still wake up a lot at night, but a big part of me doesn’t mind at all, because real-world time is speeding like a monorail and I’m trying to capture all the baby time I have with you in lingering-heart time. I’ve also frozen forever a picture of you reaching one arm up in the air in a quiet, gentle kind of amandla!-praise-Jesus-static-wave of jubilation whenever someone you love walks into a room. Your smile could thaw glaciers.

So, my bears, today was lovely and I love you both colossally. Even though you’re only going to read this when you’re much bigger (either before or after you will find it devastatingly embarrassing that your mother writes this stuff), I feel I want to say to you that life is too short to do things that you are not passionate about. I also want to say that in the end, it won’t matter so much what you achieve in terms of plans, dreams and ambitions. What will matter most is being able to look back and know that you were always in God’s will, whatever that may have looked like.

God has also laid on my heart the following Scripture, for you both:

I create the light and make the darkness.

I send good times and bad times.
I, the LORD, am the one who does these things.
Open up, O heavens,
and pour out your righteousness.
Let the earth open wide
so salvation and righteousness can sprout up together.
I, the LORD, created them.
What sorrow awaits those who argue with their Creator.
Does a clay pot argue with its maker?
Does the clay dispute with the one who shapes it, saying,
'Stop, you're doing it wrong!'
Does the pot exclaim,
'How clumsy can you be?'
How terrible it would be if a newborn baby said to its father,
'Why was I born?'
or if it said to its mother,
'Why did you make me this way?'"
This is what the LORD says—
the Holy One of Israel and your Creator:
"Do you question what I do for my children?
Do you give me orders about the work of my hands?
I am the one who made the earth
and created people to live on it.
With my hands I stretched out the heavens.
All the stars are at my command." – Isaiah 45:7-12

All my love

Mom

xx

Murray had garden shears. Cam had orange plastic safety scissors. Shrubs were damaged.