47.  Sunrise – Jessa toddler. March. Cold winter day in our jammies.

As I sat in my kitchen chair this morning, drinking coffee and watching the light change out my patio door, I was gently nudged by a memory that finds me often on cold winter mornings. A memory so good that it made the list of my 50 favorite times in my life. A list, you say? A list, I say. Shortly before my 50th birthday, my daughter Jessa asked me to put a list together of the 50 most favorite times in my life. It turned out to be the best gift I received that year because I relived a bazillion moments and how they felt and smelled and sounded. I was astonished by the emotions and since this was my list and my choices, they could be honest and without boundaries, like me.

I think Jess was surprised when she read my list. Oh, there were things she expected…a mention of my wedding, the day she was born, a trip that we took. She knew those stories and had seen photographic evidence proving their value on my list. Then there were things she knew nothing about. Places and times when the camera was missing. And since it was a list, it was cryptic. Like number 17…Celebrating Halloween October 31st, 1989. Specifically, midnight…(a story for another time). And number 47…Sunrise – Jessa toddler. March. Cold winter day in our jammies.

The number 47 morning started out like any other morning. I woke up with my alarm that was set to an ungodly o’ dark thirty. I always left getting dressed for the day last because I never knew when my geeky girl enthusiasm would leave its mark. This eliminated getting dressed twice, which would just wreck my whole day because those of you who know me well know that getting dressed is the hardest thing I do on any given day and at that time I had to dress a toddler too. A headstrong toddler. Who wasn’t color blind like me. I was still trying to convince me and the general population that I was a “good” mother and had amazing maternal instincts so I tried hard to dress Jessa in things that matched and were event appropriate. This was hard for me because I could barely accomplish that myself. I am certain that maternal instinct (dressing toddlers falls under maternal instinct) is produced in a gene that is right next to the gene that decides if you become a geeky girl. I’m also convinced that if you are destined to be a geeky girl, the geeky gene is ginormous and will squeeze the material instinct gene into a super small space on the DNA chain. I haven’t proved up this theory on Google but from experience, I’m sure I’m right. Anyways, this is how we experienced this amazing moment in our jammies.

I don’t remember why I was standing on my deck at sunrise in my jammies on a freezing cold winter morning. I’m sure it had to do with one of my animals refusing to get anywhere near the door for me to let them in from the comforts of INSIDE. I looked up and I saw the sun just peeking up over my neighborhood. I was stunned. You would have thought that I had never seen a sunrise. And really, up until that morning, I hadn’t. Not like this. This color blind girl saw a hundred different colors. They reflected through the icicles that had formed on our leafless lilac bush. I couldn’t breathe and understood for the first time how the phrase “it was so beautiful it took my breath away” was born. This could have been because I had stood outside so long that my nostrils froze shut but I like the beautiful breath away theory better. Now anyone who has been a mother to a toddler knows, they hear their momma’s heartbeat anytime they are in the same space as each other and if their momma’s heartbeat is somewhere like behind a bathroom door or outside on the deck, they become alarmed and will search for the heartbeat until they have visual confirmation again.

This is the good part…

Jessa, being as clever as she was, found the dog (who never left my side) on her leash in the middle of the warm kitchen and followed the leash through the open patio door out onto the deck to find the heartbeat she was looking for. I was so filled with the light from the sun, that I couldn’t act on the notions of maternal instinct that would have told me to bring both of us inside that second. Oh no. I picked that sweet girl up so her feety jammies wouldn’t get frozen to the deck and I carried her closer to the lilacs where I pointed out the beautiful colors dancing through the icicles onto her little hand as she reached for them. I told her I was sure that God was with us that morning. With just her and me. And she believed me because God is different for every person including toddlers. For me that morning God was light. A light that warmed a cold winter morning. A light that understood who I was. A light that brought optimism. A light that promised for one minute everything was right with my world.

As I finished my coffee this morning, I remembered the morning of number 47 like it was in the room with me. I remembered how it smelled (cold). I remembered how it sounded (crunchy) and best of all, I remembered how I felt (surprised and optimistic and loved). I was so fortunate to be frozen in place that morning, with a beacon of a heartbeat that led a beautiful little girl to see the light in her momma for the very first time. We can’t ask for much for than that now, can we?

Love,

Really Geeky Girl

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