Ways of Seeing

My kids were at Camp Grandma last week. What started out as a 2-night sleepover so that we could get a big painting project finished at our house turned into a 5-day party, with Grandma & Grandpa providing donuts for breakfast, 3 trips to the park in a day, and late-night cuddle sessions for any and all takers.

Every morning I would call and ask them are my kids coming home to me today? and my 4-year old would giggle and say "maybe tomorrow, mama. Yep, I think maybe tomorrow." My six-and-three-quarters-old would responsibly tell me that she missed me soooooooooooo much, but that it "might work out for the best" if they stayed just one more night. And Annika? Well, she'd decided she was officially in the Big Kid Club, and she was going to hang with them, thanks.

So when I sat on my front steps last Wednesday and watched them run across the yard into my open arms, it was with a truly grateful heart. They had been gone long enough to really miss them. Long enough for me to be alone with my thoughts a little too often, long enough for me to start wandering into their rooms and re-making their beds, just to smell their pillows.

Most shockingly, they'd been gone long enough for me to see them, really see them, when they came home.

Five days won't change anyone into a teenager, or give a kid the space to grow 5 inches. But it will give a 6 year old a chance to seem impossibly long and lean, and to become all at once tender, thoughtful, and independent. Since she's been home, if her face is turned the right angle I begin to see so clearly the graceful teenager she will be in another six years, even as the evidence of the chubby cheeked toddler she was six years ago fades. I hear her comments, opinions and insights with new ears: not so much as comic relief, but as the words of a big kid, a school kid, with so much insight into her world.
Five days will give a four year old boy a chance to remember how much he loves cuddling his mama. More importantly, it will give him the chance to find his voice - to make himself heard over two very opinionated sisters. He grows into himself, and his return this week has shown me how quickly he is learning everything, and how quietly he keeps all that he knows close to his chest, just to surprise and delight me with a new letter sound or math fact.

Five days will give a baby a chance to become a toddler - one of the big kids. I watched her march across the lawn and the end of our babyhood couldn't have been any clearer. She wants to talk, she wants to be included, she wants the other two to RESPECT! her, and boy do they all make each other giggle.

It is rare we are given the gift of a changed perspective. I certainly had not expected that particular miracle from my weekend off. But a miracle is what it was. I sent them away, and when I got them back, I had different kids: different, because their mother had different eyes with which to see them.