If you were sitting across the aisle from me at Magpie Coffee right now, you would see a toddler with crazy hair who is sitting quietly next to his mama in a booster seat, eating a piece of toast and playing with a toy train, pausing periodically to flash his mama a smile or give her arm a hug.
This is exactly what is happening right now. But that's not what I see.
I see a toddler who will only eat his toast, and not any of his sausage. I see a mama who is fretting because he won't drink any of his milk on demand. I see a mama who is trying to figure out how to make sure that her blue-eyed 22-month old eats anything, and I mean anything, other than just carbohydrates. He ate carrots two nights ago, and maybe I can get some applesauce into him at lunch. Right now, I'd be pleased with a few bites or gulps of protein. I know that he likes sausage. I know that he likes milk. I know that he is a good eater. But as long as he has only eaten toast thus far, I will keep on worrying, and I will keep on wishing (and begging?) for him to put down his train and pick up his fork.
The toddler is now eating another piece of toast after drinking a sip of milk and eating a tentative bite of sausage, all the while dancing to the music playing overhead and trying to sing along.
The morning has been a struggle so far. The toddler has been simply manic. He's sweet, happy, and totally fine, until one small thing doesn't go as planned: having to put a shirt on, or being strapped into the stroller, or having to wait for mama to run upstairs to grab her sweater. Then BOOM! His poor toddler brain and heart break into a million pieces and he sobs and sobs until he starts hiccuping.
I want to get frustrated but instead I just get sad for him, because it isn't his fault. His world keeps getting bigger and bigger, and so quickly. His emotions can't keep up with his new awareness of things like disappointment or waiting or mamas who forget their sweaters upstairs.
The toddler is now happily munching yet another piece of toast and making monkey noises and picking up his fork to eat more sausage.
It's been a morning of worrying that the toddler might have a fever, because I had one earlier this week. Is he cranky because he's sick? Should I take his temperature again? Should we have gone out for breakfast like we do each Friday or should we have stay home?
Every time I stick the thermometer in his ears, the reading pops up lower and lower, just to confuse me. 98.6. 97.4. 96.3. 94.0. Those aren't even real numbers!
The toddler is still dancing, still hugging my arm, still talking quietly to his train. His plate is nearly empty. All but a couple of bites of sausage are gone. Only the corner crusts are left of the the pieces of toast he ate.
One logical explanation for all the cranky this morning seems to be that the toddler was simply hungry. Hangry, even. Yes, he may have been the walking definition of this made-up word that smushes hungry and angry into one supremely useful and appropriate term. Or perhaps he is just tired, or feeling the anxiety of being off-routine. He might have been cranky for no reason. He might just be a toddler.
What you see is a toddler who now has picked up the book Where is My Mommy? and handed it to his mama to read. A toddler who makes all the right animal noises when the little bunny approaches a chicken (cluck-cluck), a pig (oink-oink), and a horse (neigh-neigh) to ask them about his maternal origins. What you see is a toddler driving his trains over the top of a stack of board books, quietly and calmly, whispering to the tank engine and abiding in his own perfect little world inside his own perfect little blonde head.
Motherhood is teaching me to let my guard down. Motherhood is teaching me humility. Motherhood is trying its best to teach me about keeping my eye on the holy even when my brain would rather obsess over the profane. The holy is a toddler eating his toast and singing songs and giving me unprovoked smiles and hugs. The profane is the frustration of a cranky morning, anxiety about nutrition, feeling weary for a toddler ruled by his emotions.
Somehow we all learn to dismiss the beauty of a sacred, perfect, present moment unless it comes from sacred, perfect circumstances. We have all these expectations that holy moments come only from well-curated, perfectly-planned, impeccably-executed setups.
It would be easy to view as holy the dangling legs swinging in a booster seat next to me if they belonged to a kid who'd been charming and sweet and compliant all morning. It's harder to see these legs as holy when you remember how they tried to kick you in protest as you changed them out of pajamas and into pants.
It is imagination that lets us find the holy in the midst of the tantrums and the tears (our toddler's and our own!). It is imagination that lets our hardened hearts grow soft at the sight of a miniature human being flashing us a huge, cheesy grin as he stuffs another piece of sausage into his mouth and then giggles about it.
A holy imagination lets us shed our expectations and our plans, and lets us instead rest in the now. It gives us eyes to see this precious moment for what it is. It clears away everything that clouds our vision - the cares of the day, the worries of the world, the griefs of the past.
This present holy moment is a toddler, being extraordinarily well behaved, eating his special Friday-morning breakfast with is mama and enjoying every minute of it, because he has food and trains and music and books, and a mama to hug, and a table across the room full of retired men who like to make silly faces at him.
May I always have eyes to see this.
(Cross-posted at The Holy Imagination)
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