Fill Me Up!

Sometimes the world fills me up. You know what I mean. 

Example: Last night there was a storm--blew in early evening and left again before we woke up. But the wind was kicking up quite a rage outside! When I feel a storm coming--when it begins to creep up through the neighborhood--I have to open my doors and windows. I feel like welcoming the storm just to my doorstep. There is the warm, humid calm for a few minutes. Then the breeze begins to pick up, and the air smells fresher, more earthy. And the first few drops start to fall. It is a distinct sensation for me. I get a Kate Chopin feeling (minus the casually-cheating-on-your-husband deal): It's a heady, reckless, on-the-edge-of-wild-abandon feeling. It makes me wish we lived in the 1800s for just that moment. Just long enough so that I had to strip off layers and layers of big heavy crinoline skirts, pull off the suffocating bodice, and stand in my backyard in my bloomers. I would soak in the rain, all the way through, till it was washing through my bone marrow. I would drink it as it fell. I would declare the eternal "yes," as it were. I was filled up.

Example: I drove to Price last Monday. It was a beautiful drive, between the mountains, and out into hidden valleys, then empty flat fields. The first hour I drove through a rainstorm. Then it cleared, and for the second hour I wound through the canyon alone. My kids slept in the backseat. I was listening to Mumford & Sons, which is actually vital information for the moment I am describing. There I was, driving between mountains just beginning to green, stubbornly holding onto their stark white patches of snow. And the deer were everywhere, dozens of them standing around. And the Englishmen were playing their folk music in my head, with the repeated declaration that Love would set me free... "to be more like the man you were made to be." And it was a Sound of Music moment--I wanted to pull the van over, climb the nearest hill and race over the top, singing Mumford's declarations in robust, breathless exhilaration. I was filled up.

Example: My daughter bit me yesterday. Bit me before she had taken her first suck. Bit me hard. So I flicked her mouth (yikes, should I be telling this to the online world? Can I be brought before CPS for this action?). She was startled. And then, yes, she was angry. She put up an incredible little fit. I am talking wracking sobs after only twenty seconds of crying (dramatic much?). So Coren came over to comfort her. He stroked her head. "Okay Risa. Okay Risa." Coren is probably Risa's favorite person (was especially her favorite in that moment; Mom certainly wasn't), and so she listened and agreed. She decided she was okay, after all. And she leaned over to watch him. And then he really watched her. Studied her. Anyone who knows our kids knows they don't really glance at things--they study them. It can be unnerving sometimes, actually. So they studied each other. I knew there was something working itself out behind Coren's eyes, so I waited. He looked up at me, a revelatory look on his face, and said, "Risa cute. Cute Risa." I smiled. "Yes," I said, "Risa is very cute." The truth of it had suddenly dawned on him. Call me crazy, over-analytical, whatever--I think, perhaps without the ability to completely recognize it or express it yet, that this was the first moment in Coren's life that he realized that he loved his little sister. It was love on his face. Yes, I was completely filled up.

There was another moment last night with my husband that filled me up completely. But you know what, that one's just for me. :)

Sometimes this world just fills me up. You know what I mean.