To Catch and Keep a Perfect Morning

Here in Kansas I've managed to find some (part-time) gainful employment,
and so I actually find myself quite busy in these weeks leading up to the start of a new Jewish year.
While, in part, it feels deliciously normal to be doing rabbi-work,
the juggling act of being home full-time with the children and trying to get any work besides housework done is not going as smoothly as I might have imagined.

It is so easy to feel swallowed by the stress.

My head tells me to write those sermons that are knocking around in my head.
My head tells me the kitchen floor is disgusting (it is!) and needs a good scrubbing.
My head tells me that the boys' preschool bags really, really need to be assembled.  Yesterday.
My head tells me I should get some challah baked while it's not so humid.

But my heart is saying something completely different.
My heart tells me that, one day, I'm going to miss the children being small enough to scoop up,
kiss on the head, and swing around till their baby belly laughs fill the room.
It tells me if I don't hustle them into some shoes
and pack them into the car for an unplanned trip to the park this morning,
(when, miraculously, the morning temperature is below 80 degrees for the first time in months,)
that years from now, I'm going to wish I had.


My heart tells me that ten or fifteen years down the road, 
when the last place they want to be is tromping through the park with me,
searching for frogs, and examining earthworms and cicada shells,
slinging handfuls of gravel into the lake,



and lazily swishing a stick through pondwater debris


screaming with joy as we pound along a bridge with unruly feet,


getting muddy without worrying about it,


and dozing in the gorgeous late-summer-morning fresh air,


playing hide-and-seek behind the trees,


and munching on last week's stale challah that was intended for the ducks,


when they are too old to while away a morning at the park with their annoying old Ima

I will regret the perfect sermons, 

the shining toilets and floors,

and the homemade challah

that I allowed to take the place 

of one perfect morning at the park with these little ducklings

who I know perfectly and painfully well

will grow up and away from me far, far too fast for my liking.

(And certainly far too fast to miss out on mornings like these.)