I guess I like to think in analogies. My husband is one of those engineering types, who sees things in black and white. I am constantly operating in the shades of gray, where I seem to most comfortably abide. It is with irony that this latest post idea came to me. For one it has a math theme and two, it kind of negates what I just said.
Anyways, I've been thinking about how my days of motherhood have a ma thematic quality to them. There are the days I add to my children and myself. These are the days when there is a positive feeling in the house. I have slept well; they have slept well. -No fractions or fractured selves. It's not just a feeling or an attitude, it's a way of interacting with one another. We are a team. Laughter and smiles abound, not the scowl I seem to have become quite skilled at on certain days. Our house had cheek!
There are the days that subtract from who I am and my children. Usually, sleep has been problematic for four or five days, with a sleep disparity and disturbance for me resembling an isosceles triangle. There is nothing equal in the household, whether it be my mood or the girls'. Actions and words take away from one another and diminish whole selves and house.
There are the moments, the variables,that my children add throughout my days.There are the random I love you s and hugs from my little ones that are sprinkled through out a morning and a quiet afternoon.There are the little surprise crafts and pictures that are so wonderfully heartfelt and whimsical that multiply good moods and good cheer. There are my oldest girl's bright smiles, on a face that can be too serious for her little years. There are my youngest girl's belly laughs that make you belly laugh with her. There is the way they play together and the way we all play together that makes any problem come out right.
There are the days of mad math, where I can honestly say screw it to the chaos and disorder that can prevail with small children. I never liked math in the first place. Life, these beautiful little girls, can not be fit neatly into an equation.
Then there are days that I feel like I subtract, subtract, and subtract. Nothing comes out right. Nothing goes right. I get this really shitty image of myself sitting next to this large abacus, counting all the ways I have taken away from the girls at any given moment. I pray and wish for a magic formula that will make it all right.
But then I remember life is not math or if it is, it's closer to mad math. Yeah, mad math....
Galileo said "Mathematics is the alphabet with which God has written the universe." So it would only stand to reason that the mathematics... even the imaginary numbers... have their place throughout life. When it is all said and done, and you look back at the formula work you've done in raising these little ones, maintaining yourself, your home, your relationship with your husband and family, dealing with the checks, the balances, the positives, the negatives and those infernal unknowns, you will see that it all made a difference. Just do the best you can!
ReplyDeleteNot liking mathematics very much, though I had to deal with lots of figures in my job, I never thought of my family in mathematical terms. To me it was more like hills, valleys,like geography I gues..
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