Shake Out And Play, Mama

(October post #4)

see list of all posts here

Shake Out And Play, Mama

I can’t place, quite, the stars
that flash in your pinched up eyes –
you dart between our hearts
like songbirds do to skies.

You roil in laughter – high pitched, belly
winsome Puck to Shakespeare’s day;
Ever-merry, you: an Otter telling
my heart to shake out and play.

Shake out and play, Mama,
shake out and play
Loosen up about your role
You’ve got one childhood, Mama,
one childhood,
of mine before I’m grown.

Your hair, unevenly cut and knotted
perpetually at your back
Mass of wood folk there might cottage
in the tiniest little shack.

I want to cup you, you know; peer close, level low.
Level my own eyes to truly see.
I want to hear you, high-pitched and merry
and know all the things you mean.

You are part mythology to me,
ether-real and not of my world.
The tiniest piece of eternity,
part some twinkling angel, and part my little girl.

I love you. I breathe it in your ear.
Wipe sweaty hair from neck while you lay amidst your dolls.
I love you. I want you to truly hear.
You are the sweetest (and strictest, and most priceless) of all my calls.

Shake out and play, Mama,
shake out and play
Loosen up about your role
You’ve got one childhood, Mama,
one childhood,
of mine before I’m grown.

My friend Laura, when summing up my series in a FB post, wrote:

Her theme this month is the gathering-in of living a heart- focused life; and that being present in our daily grind is what nurtures those big dreams, one small, faithful step at a time.

I totally teared up, you guys, not only because her description was beautiful but because she really captured something that I still can’t put into words. Yes, I thought, yes – that’s it. A gathering-in. A heart-focused life. Real, faithful daily life nurturing the dreams. All of it.

Today I homeschooled 7 kids (while my sister took toddlers away, hallelujah) – and that’s not a complaint, because I love doing it. But it rained all day, the house is small, the husband worked, my heart felt weighed down and distracted by So Many Hard Things in the lives of people I love…and at the end of it all, the preschooler peed all over the toilet seat instead peeing in it, just at bedtime. I may or may not have “trampled my own boundaries” and yelled.

“These sure feel like long days,” David says just now, finally crashing down beside me.

Yeah, they do.