pieces and ponderings

I sit in my quiet living room this morning…before children numbers two through five are awake for the day.  I drink in the stillness of the morning…I love morning stillness.  Child number one is already up and gone, traveling back to his college town to visit friends.  I sit drinking my coffee, looking at the shoes scattered around the living room rug.  Three pairs of sneakers and two pairs of flip-flops (one of them mine…they don’t hurt my feet…see earlier post) lay there, devoid of the active feet they belong to…unable to move on their own.  Now as the momma of the house, I am very capable of being bothered by shoes not placed in their proper putting-away-places, even when they are my own…but not this morning.

Maybe it was because I had just said good-byes to my first-born, but as I look at those shoes scattered about, I see the lives they represent…my younger boys who are not as young as they used to be.  I see the getting-too-small-knock-off-crocs that my youngest recently told me need replacing…I think of his smile and his laughter and how he makes me laugh all the time.  The imitation crocs were shed close to his worn-looking Pumas, the ones he’s wearing to basketball camp, where he is discovering muscles sore from stretching and exercising…welcome to big guy work-outs…where basketball is taking on a whole new meaning.

In close proximity, to child number five’s footwear, lay child number four’s…the new flip-flops recently purchased because last year’s don’t fit too well anymore.  He has Pumas adorning the floor also…topped with smelly athletic socks from yesterday’s workouts and practices.  He’s about to be in his second year of high school…really?  But just yesterday or just a few yesterdays ago, he was bailing off the spray-painted-purple bike (see earlier post).  Now he’s taller than me and consumes much of the grocery budget all by himself.

And over by the footstool lay the cross-trainers of child number three…he owns the largest sized shoes in the house…yes, bigger than dad’s by a good bit.  He’s a senior in high school now…really??  Another senior year??…with more pictures of his growing up years to find for the yearbook.  How did this happen so fast??

This morning there are shoes scattered all over my living room rug…but I don’t mind…REALLY!!