Wil loves music. Last night as we were cleaning up a big dinner with family, Wil brought his CD player into the kitchen, propped it up on the island and asked me to help him plug it in. After I plugged it in, I went on to clean dishes. He put in his Music Together CD, and forwarded it to the song he wanted to hear, “Play the Drum.”
“Mom, play the drums!” He was standing up patting his hands on the kitchen stool seat. I walked over and played the kitchen stool drum with him.
After the song was over, I went back to the dishes while Wil shuffled through the other songs on the CD. He stopped on “Wiggle.”
“Mom, dance!” He said. I wiggled to the song while drying the dishes.
“No, REEEEAAALY dance!”
I set down the dishes, held his hands, and we wiggled our hearts away in the middle of the kitchen. With Wil’s low muscle tone, he doesn’t bend his knees when he dances, so when he wiggles, he does this cute, little bend over, shake his butt thing. Cracks me up every time!
I’m really good at multi-tasking. Heck, what parent isn’t? I can’t remember the last time I simply brushed my teeth. With one free hand I can get a kid dressed, make breakfast, clean a counter or find that thing the kids lost and need right now. As amazing as we parents are at getting sh*t done, single-handedly, I believe sometimes we are still missing something. We have checked so much off of our list, how can there possibly be a void? In my experience, I would answer that the moment is not whole. Rather, it is divided up into many multiple, varying fractions of a whole so it appears to be full, but there are still many small empty spaces.
Wil lives his moments in whole. He assigns special value to all of his moments. Nothing is broken down into a lesser or smaller fraction. The flight of a bumble bee is always worth stopping and observing. He literally stops to smell the flowers. “Mom, mmmm, smell this one!” He finds something new in every moment because he is fully living in it. When you live like that, jaded or bored simply can not exist. Each time it’s a new and exciting experience.
I love that Wil never lets me do things half-way. I love that he lives life whole and he brings me and anyone who is around into his world. I see things new through his eyes. Though he is 11 years old, he has not grown jaded or bored of these things, and I don’t think he ever will. I love to be reminded how cool blowing bubbles is, and again contemplate the impressive aerodynamics of bumble bees. Though my natural tendency is to live life in multiple fractions, I’m so thankful I have someone in my life that will pull me out of my multi-dimensional life. Not just kinda half-way, but REEEEAAALY live life. whole.
WILingness 