A Perfect Day

It's Melanie's birthday today, 26 years old. She handed me a letter yesterday that she wrote to me, telling me how much our little adventures we take mean to her and how blessed she feels to be so close to Emery and I. It brought that sweet kind of tear to my eye, because I could have written all the same things to her. My girls write me letters every once in a while and they always are treasured gifts. I know they love me and they tell me often, but there is still something profoundly beautiful about the written word to me.

We are heading out for breakfast this morning, birthday breakfast, which is a tradition with us. Mei-Ling will grow up with this tradition too, same as we always let the children have left over cake and ice cream for breakfast the day after their birthdays. Just a little something extra.

As I was doing my chores this morning, and later working in the garden, I did some travelling back in time in my mind. Thinking about the joy of this day 26 years ago, and how much fun it has been to be a mom. How I loved pouring over each new edition of Mothering Magazine as a young mother, learning new ways of parenting compared to how I was raised. I thought about the 17 years we homeschooled. I remembered too when we nearly lost our Melanie and know just how she feels about Mei-Ling and the precious balance between life and loss. I count it all such joy. Motherhood is beautiful beyond words. We reap such a harvest of joy when we sow with joy. Like working in the garden this morning. It was work to prepare the soil, work to plant, the kind of work Gibran wrote about in "The Prophet", and now such beauty in the harvest. Thank you children for the gift of being you, and Happy Birthday Melanie !

Tonight we will gather with family and friends and celebrate the day you were born.

On Children Kahlil Gibran
Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,

For they have their own thoughts.You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,

which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your childrenas living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,

and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let our bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;

For even as He loves the arrow that flies,

so He loves also the bow that is stable.