Growing up

My sons are out today.

Both surfaced early, Vetboy to go and assist with a dressage show and Small to go and referee. I expect neither home till later this evening when they will appear full of stories of their day and starving hungry. I have prepared for the hunger on a cold winters night with macaroni cheese and rice pudding with stewed fruit. I look forward to their return and their stories.

I have also looked after a friends two year old, "King Julian" of Madagascar fame, this afternoon. I forget surprisingly easily how active toddlers are. King Julian and I did have so much fun and had toys strewn across the kitchen/library by the time we were finished playing. For both of us it was a fun laughter filled afternoon and for his young mother hopefully welcome healing space for herself.

Now that he is gone home giggling with his mother and my kitchen/library restored to rights I reflect how quickly children grow, from baby to toddler to independent youngsters. They grow by the Grace of God, and I have been blessed to participate with food and attention and love.

Grace from Grace

I am not good with little girls, even less with teenaged girls.

I know that some of my difficulty arises from my own childhood, and even more from the death of my full term daughter in the womb. A still born child who is horribly deformed is a peculiar kind of grief, such a mixture of feelings. Ever since I find myself wondering what my daughter would have been like at five or ten or fifteen, wondering what books and colours and movies she would have liked and the grief spills, fresh and new. Over and over.

Recently one of my husband's oldest friends remarried, acquired a five year old daughter called Grace and returned home.

We met at Mass one fine but quite ordinary Sunday morning. Grace and I.

It was not love at first sight, not on my part, yet Grace took no notice of my lack of enthusiasm.

I discovered that even if I did not know how to be with her, she most certainly knew how to be with me. Gradually over the last four months we have become friends. She loves Winnie the Pooh and laughs hysterically at the stories of A A Milne, rolling on the floor with delight. I have learned a great deal about Barbie and Ken, about the giant purple dinosaur Barney, about playing in the rain, about laughing, about playing hide and seek, about sitting peacefully with a dozing five year old on my lap, about other ways of sadness and loss.

The thing about Grace is that she draws others into her magical circle that takes no account of years lived, being as she is, fully and seriously concerned with living vibrantly. She sometimes looks at me with sadness and asks how I never learned to play but brightens with the thought that she will teach me.

And teach me she does. In her lessons I find my raw grief for my own small daughter is transmuted in a way that I do not understand into something I do not recognise but which I receive with gratitude.

Grace from Grace indeed.