ordinary time

I'll confess, toward the end of the Christmas season, I was looking forward to things going back to normal. Maybe it was the horrible cold-and-fever virus that hit everyone during the Christmas octave, or the disappointment of so many cancelled plans, or just the antsy-pantsy 4-year-old who was getting a too-long break from routine and preschool work.

Then it got far too cold to play outside. 

Didn't stop me from drinking iced coffee, though.

 And someone celebrated the night before our first blizzard by kicking her kitchen chair backward, splitting her head open, and taking a trip to urgent care. 

She's the family daredevil. I'll be amazed if she makes it to age four without breaking a bone.

After on-again, off-again fevers and isolated vomiting (including an amazing display all over the living room rug), Mr. B. was diagnosed with a minor ear infection.

And I say to myself, "When will things go back to normal?" But then I realize this is normal. It's normal for little kids to get hurt, get sick, and it's normal for me to worry about them. It's normal to have days of chaos where the playroom looks like a bomb went off, and every hamper in the laundry room is overflowing. It's normal to have a pipe freeze in the winter when you're still in the process of fixing up your house. Normal, normal, normal problems. I can worry, yes, but I can also be grateful when my ears pick up happy shrieks instead of sniffling and gagging. I can be content to shovel load after load from washer to dryer to hamper to drawers, wipe down tables, sweep floors content in the ordinary cycle of clean and dirty in the rhythm of our day. I can take an afternoon off when the kids are tired, and sit and watch Toy Story, reveling in their delight in seeing a 23-year-old movie for the first time. I can dry the tears, endure the screams, enjoy the giggles that won't last forever. I can simultaneously mourn and enjoy that my diaper bag is empty of diapers because my kids are no longer toddlers.

My vocation now is ordinary time.