It is a season of penance, when dead things are called to life and redbuds drape themselves in purple. Jack and Cate play outside, running back and forth across our dirt driveway. Their laughter trips over red lava stones, heralding life.
Life does not arrive when the kids are grown and I have time to do as I please - writing, working, concerned with adult matters instead of dirty pants and hungry tummies - life is now. Today. Life is not postponed because of my kids, not interrupted. It is propagated through them. Propagated in me. Propagated in the world they touch. They are joyfully, wildly alive. And while their life, untamed and freckled, often requires all of mine, I would not wish for any other. And they run and play and fight and whine, catching me up. And I, though often tired and discontent, bud.
