Putting Emma to bed, the baby is asleep on the other side of us, and Emma is telling me how she feels bad when people yell at her. I try to tell her that there is good and bad in life, and if everything is good, you'd never know it because you'd have nothing to compare it to. So a little bad every now and then just helps you appreciate the good. We both lay there and I'm thinking is she really going to buy that load of crap I just fed her?? If everything was good all the time, it would be GREAT. Luckily she's six, and thinks everything I say is true.
She's long and lanky and enjoys yelling when Nathan tortures her, which since we're all home for the summer, is every fifteen minutes or so. With maybe a break during "Price is Right," if they're not too close to each other on the bed. She's the middle baby, so there's the potential for her to be lost between new baby and loud big brother. But I was the middle baby, and I protect her as best I can. What I can't seem to do is to stop her from growing and changing so alarmingly fast. Why is there all this growing? You can't hang on to any of it.
I don't know how regular people do it. I don't know how people aren't all hanging on desperately like I am, and questioning things, just like Emma. When she blows a hole in every theory just by thinking it -- why can't things be good all the time? It shakes my foundation. There is no good reason. There is no good reason why we can't just never read, never focus, never eat Froot Loops all the time. We could probably do all those things and forget rules, common sense, education, kindness. I think if we leapt into the void of senselessness and chaos, we'd eventually come out the other side, dying for some salad. A great book. Some hugs. The having to walk the border of chaos constantly pulling people from going over the edge all day -- it makes your arms tired. It makes you want to look over the edge and see if it's better over there. But you can't leap. Except occasionally. You can let them stay up late. You can let them watch Disney Channel.
In the meantime, I have these three babies light-speeding through summertime. I watch them in the pool, in the sandbox, eating my sandwiches and always wanting something more, and I can't stand that I am holding off chaos with one weak hand, until they are big enough to hold it off themselves. Or leap in.
There is barely order. And we are just one little family.
