until the laughter of children is simply the laughter of children

    you have this amazing ability to see what matters
    if we talk for three - five - seven hours, there will be something that you speak to
    that is of all the things i have said the most real in my heart. the most pressing on my mind.
    the thing i was wanting to speak and have heard.

    last night, it was different, i just said the smallest thing, " and there is a daycare right next door.." and you stopped me - stopped everything and said that that would have been good to know in knowing what i was working through in regards to the school and the children. Every morning i have to start my day wrestling with all the emotions and feelings that it brings up.

    I had not realized. Somehow, i had not realized. That when i heard them laugh or saw them I could come inside, that I would often wait for them to be indoors before being in my own backyard. I physically hid from children. I thought it was because I would be different with the kids, because I didn't want the conflict of them having plastic toys and dance parties when i fully believe natural is best and gentle parenting is wise and listening to the children as emotional equals matters so much.
I thought it was that.

  I think now, that it's something else. It's being near children and not with them. It's having children so close that don't know me. It's having parents drop off and not have any idea that i am magic for their child. It is more children I cannot know. It is children that cannot be mine.

  And then, I wondered why it was good with Evan. Why I just fell in step with him so easily.
and you said - maybe because he is a child who won't be taken away from you. And I sobbed.
I'm sure you knew I was crying. It rang so true!! Maybe I left the school. Maybe there were other things going on. But the contract not being renewed, the passing on of my role in their lives to someone else. That took something from me, that took the journey from me. Someone else was raising them now, and I could love them with all of my heart but i wasn't with them, I wasn't hearing their voice or helping them when things got hard, I wasn't watching them learn and learning with them, and being shown the world from their lived lives. I wasn't there for hugs and smiles across the room, for laughter and for angry kicks at the floor.  I'm not seeing them bike away the wind in their hair. They are like the whole world up close. I would easily trade the ocean and the stars for them, for they are the ocean and the stars. and more.

   I think that i need to be with them or hearing them or sending them support.
I can't just pine away for them like a puddle of love and tears for when they do phone, when we do see each other, i won't have anything to impart - nothing to tell - no growth and i must stay strong for when they need my strength and i must keep being the person they knew, this happy vivacious enthusiastic curious person who tried. They saw me. They knew me. I saw them. I knew them. We got each other and we loved each other.

    I want them all in my arms, as baby birds to feed and shelter from the cold. I want to watch the tips of my wings turn to ice as they, warm beneath my feathers breath in and out in the deepest and safest of sleeps.

   It's nice to sit with this image. Just for a little while. Take comfort in what i would offer them.
Then to open my eyes, take in a few slow breaths and look up because they are flying all over the place and all i can do is hope that when i was building my part of their nest that they were watching and that someday when they see a twig in a certain shape in the early morning, that they might remember me and smile. For every twig i see is them, and so much they have touched has forever been changed.

    You got me to open this door a little once again. You helped me cry again. You helped me to see that I am positioned to face a child's life going on without me. That I am actively surrounded by what i am avoiding most.

    I have to say hello. I can't hold on too tightly. I have to let myself love even if there is space, even if there are many days i am missing. It has to be okay that they are with their families, skiing in the mountains and biking on the trails, waking up for Saturday pancakes and giving goodnight kisses.

And it has to be okay that when you are driving downtown at night, i am not beside you.