Springtime, where are you? I sit here waiting for your warm glorious rays of sunshine to wash over me, to bring me out of this gloomy winter. But it’s like I’m sitting here alone at a table for two and you’re the date that stands me up.
It’s April and I’m supposed to be in sandals and sundresses, not still bundled up in scarves and sweaters.
Come on Springtime, don’t leave me hanging.
I believe there is a special place in hell reserved for children’s gloves. When I try to get his little fingers in all the proper holes, it’s like I’m trying to do an origami puzzle. We’ve got some mittens, but he’s already figured out that the gloves mean he can still use his hands as normally as possible. I offered up the mittens the other day when we went out, but no, he had to wear the ones “with the fingers.”
And they keep going missing. Sometimes they turn up sometimes not. Some have been lost and forgotten at school, others likely hiding out having a party with all the lost socks. As I went out in search of replacement gloves for those that went missing, I discovered that, unbelievably, you cannot find children’s gloves at the shops in the middle of February. They’ve already cleared them out to make room for shorts and swimwear.
So this is all we’ve got left. My son walks around in a kaleidoscope of unmatching knitwear.
Negative space. The area surrounding the main subject, the positive space, in photography and art. Negative space is an effective technique used to draw one’s eye and focus toward the main subject. But negative space is just as important in giving a photo, or any piece of art, some “breathing room.” Your eyes need a place to rest in a composition and negative space is what keeps an image from being cluttered with too many unnecessary elements. When used effectively, negative space makes the overall image stronger and more powerful.
Is it like this in life as well? Have our modern lifestyles become so consumed with the need to “have it all” that we no longer leave room for negative space, for breathing room, for rest? Even though it’s that breathing room that actually makes us stronger, happier, more productive.
Sometimes I feel like I’m living inside a photograph cluttered with too many distracting elements and clutter, there’s no negative space, and therefore, no understanding of where to focus. As Tony Robbins says:
One reason so few of us achieve what we truly want is that we never direct our focus; we never concentrate our power. Most people dabble their way through life, never deciding to master anything in particular.
That’s me. Dabbler. Jack of all trades, master of none. I’m feeling the need to focus and recompose, adding a bit of negative space back into the picture.
How do you create negative space in life in order to focus on and strengthen the positive?.
As I look at him peeking through the railings on the stairs, I really feel the weight of him growing up. It seems like only yesterday we were putting up the safety gates at the top and bottom of the stairs, protecting our now mobile infant from their dangers.
Then, just after his 3rd birthday we decided on an impulse to take the gates down. We didn’t even really debate or discuss the topic. He just said to me, “I think I’m going to take these gates down today.” And I said, “yeah, OK, I don’t see why not.” After all, the little man was navigating the stairs with confidence. And we were no longer obsessively making sure we closed the gates. Well, a few minutes and several turns of a screwdriver later, they were gone. The empty screw holes are now patched and painted, the gates erased from our daily lives.
But when we took the gates down, it was a bittersweet moment for me. Obviously sweet because my son is growing and learning. But at the same time bitter as I felt the heartache of a mother watching her baby grow up, passing a milestone. He’s no longer a baby, or an infant, or a toddler. He’s a full on boy already up to my belly button, the place where we were once connected. One day he’ll tower over me and I’ll be the one looking up into his eyes and I can only hope that I’m doing my best to guide him on this path to manhood.
Teaching him to climb the stairs was just the beginning. Now, I don’t even think twice about him on the stairs, even when he pretends to be a worm and slide down them on his belly feet first. I trust him. I trust that he’s learning his limitations. How much has changed in just three short years. My child, once completely dependent on me, now regularly stating emphatically, “No, I will do it by myself, mummy.”
I believe Gretchen Rubin when she says in The Happiness Project,
“The days are long, but the years are short.”
Sometimes it’s hard to get through the day and you’re counting down the hours until their bedtime, at least I am. But then I have moments like this when I can barely remember the baby gates, and I can’t believe how fast the time has passed.
This is where I sit and do my work, my office. The view ahead a catalog of sustenance. Coffee maker. Oven. Refrigerator. And I sit here on a bar stool desperately in need of a healthy dose of WD-40 to keep it from making an infernal squeaking noise every time I even breathe. Either that or one day I may throw it out the window. Squeak. Squeak. Squeak. As if the tinnitis in my left ear wasn’t enough drive me mad.