wonderful (adjective)— inspiring delight, pleasure, or awe, sometimes flashy and in-your-face, but not always: sometimes wonderful is quiet, whispering to some subconscious understanding of the natural world and your place in it.

 

It’s—

             the—

most

 wonderful

time—

                                                     of the year!

 

So goes the old song, anyway. Maybe I’m a little early; maybe that song isn’t applicable to these late fall days, to this November melancholy. Maybe you’re supposed to save it until the bright sparkle of Christmastime, when the snow sticks around a bit more, covering all the browns and greys completely, and even the stoplights on the city streets (to borrow from another song) “blink a bright red and green”.

Maybe. Or maybe I’m not that far off to sing it now, as I drive along country roads watching combines crawl methodically back and forth across the dry fields, stopping now and then to fill wagons with their harvest gold. The dry leaves of cornstalks and soybeans shine with an almost-hidden luster that only the long light of morning or evening can bring forth, and only if you’re watching for it: shades of lavender and cream. The dying plants in my garden have a softer beauty now. They are frail, the veins standing out in the spotted leaves, but the dimming colors are richer, somehow, for surviving the first weeks of cold nights. It occurs to me that maybe people are a little like that, too, in their own way.

 

The world is tilting, falling towards winter in slow-motion, the way the last of the autumn leaves do when they finally release their hold on the branches of the trees. And I feel that tug within me, in some deep place of my soul: the world is preparing for something. In its dying and scattering, its harvesting and gathering in, it is a stripped-down version of itself, and it waits… leaning toward Christmas.

“For a second you catch a whiff in the air of some fragrance that reminds you of a place you’ve never been and a time you have no words for. You are aware of the beating of your heart.

The extraordinary thing that is about to happen is matched only by the extraordinary moment just before it happens.”

Fredrick Buechner’s words have played in my mind over and over to the rhythm of this time of gathering dark and growing cold.

“Advent is the name of that moment… if you concentrate just for an instant, far off in the deeps of you somewhere you can feel the beating of your heart. For all its madness and lostness, not to mention your own, you can hear the world itself holding its breath.”

It’s the most wonderful—full of wonder—time of the year.

 

beat (n)-- the main accent or rhythmic unit in music or poetry or life, the repetition of little things that almost fall under the radar until suddenly they stop and a new rhythm picks up; also, (adj.) completely exhausted, or, the normal state of being in the days and weeks and months and years of raising babies

 

as much as i dislike the endlessness of doing laundry in this season of parenting littles, days like today are a grace. breezy and blue-skied, the liturgy of hanging clean, damp, fresh-smelling clothing on the line redeems the whole mundane cycle for me. the laughter of my older kids carries over from some other part of the yard, and as the sheets blow around, my baby son and i carry on a game of peekaboo, his darling little grins now hidden, now revealed to me.

 

and maybe that's what gets me, and gives my pleasantly drifting thoughts a startling focus. one son, tiny and chubby and wiggling on a quilt on the grass. the other running around, his once-dimpled legs somehow grown long and lean... who i will bring to school tomorrow.

 

it’s “just” kindergarten.

 

i know that.

 

but it’s also the beginning of a new phase of parenting (and life) that snuck up on me way too quickly, despite my best efforts to count gifts and savor the moment and weigh the present down with my full attention here, here, and here.

 

not that i was “ready” to be a mother when this boy entered the world five years ago… but at least then, when i felt the first waves of contractions roll through my body, i thought i was.

now my heart is doing its own kind of contracting, not at the thought of kindergarten, but of all the growing pains to come, of which this is just the first tiny step. i know my thoughts are snowballing, and i can laugh at myself for thinking of milestones so far ahead when my boy is still so small.

 

it IS funny.

 

but parenting is the weirdest thing i’ve ever experienced, and you can be bursting with excitement for your child’s growth and also lamenting the fact that they aren’t so small anymore… at the same time, all the time.

 

so here’s to the mamas (and daddies) with “babies” starting new adventures of all kinds.

and here’s to this little boy, with a heart huge like his mama’s and a mind curious as his daddy's, as he starts this adventure of his.

 

i love you and Jesus loves you, Caleb Jayber.