Bound Together

We brought home a canvas bag full of books from the library to give us something to think about other than the gray gloom that seems to be parked on the midwest. Why can't it just snow and make everything soft and white again?

We read a story about a fox who can't see past his own schemes to harvest tasty grapes. It isn't that he doesn't want to share with the rest of the community, he refuses to recognize the gifts of others who could help him. Instead he pushes forward an agenda bound to fail. There are animals stacked on animals and jumps and twists and eventually each animal ends up on the ground without any grapes. When there is rebellion and each member of the community gets to the grapes using their God-given gifts, the fox turns against himself, walks away, and huffs that he didn't want the grapes anyway.

I hope that I am more like the possum who finally calls the fox's plans hopeless and urges the others to use their gifts. But really I look a lot like the fox who has a plan and sticks to it, even when strategy assessment is obvious. How many times do I have in my mind the things-that-must-happen today? How many little boys' questions do I brush off to pursue those things? I know it is bound to happen when we share almost all of our days together. But which gifts am I missing when I say, "Just a minute"? Justin Roberts (justinroberts.org) has a song about this often spoken phrase of motherhood. When mom says "just a minute, she means more than just a minute". The little one being asked to wait turns his thoughts to what a minute really is. Aren't we all just minutes? When his baby brother was just a minute old he was so small; and Grandma? "She is many, many, many, many.. minutes. We're all just minutes". And then his mom hugs him, and he feels more than just a minute.

Tonight as we read our new books together, Elliott was so tired he needed to move some part of his body to stay awake. His wiggles finally became just touches of the page, then the binding. He went gently along the jacket cover, then reached in the spine of the book, poking into that most curious empty space created when the book is opened wide. Tomorrow he will be back in his studio in the basement making covers for books, or entire new books, or tiny booklets for his Justin Roberts CD's. He's figuring out how it all fits together, and then recreating it with whatever he can find (and leaving a great deal of it behind on the floor). Whatever plans I have can wait, just a minute, to see his latest creation.