I watch the
sunrise each morning.  Reading, writing,
I pause to turn toward the window.  At
first all is black, night’s heavy velvet stretched.  With every glance the scene changes, like
clicking through slides in a view finder. 
Fog shifts, blue spreads wide one day, then purple or even green the
next.  Mist rises off the river I cannot
see from here, ghostly lines of white revealing the river’s path.

In the
evening I bend and twist while washing dishes, watching the light change again
through the kitchen windows.  The sun
sets out one side of the house morphing clouds into relief, filling spaces with
yellow, etching outlines in gold or pink. 
On the other side of the house the light also changes.  

“Rainbow,
rainbow,” my son shouts and we all run out the closest door like a crowd fleeing a burning building.  Scurrying
around the yard, we search for openings between the tall pines, the out
buildings, where the biggest arcs of red, yellow, indigo and all the rest can be
seen running like a road through layers of clouds and light.  

The sky’s
show changes quickly, morphing like trees in fall.

None of this
lasts for long. 

//

My little
boy gives me twelve kisses at bed time each night, rapid-fire smacks one right
after the other, an exertion of pure love on his part.  He lays his claim of love on me, pressing
lips to my cheek and I count to hold them close, these kisses like shafts of
light buried in my heart, memories of this passing season of such open love and
affection.

The other
night, he woke to go to the bathroom and sat waiting for me on the hallway
floor, cross-legged, his head bobbing and weaving like a sleepy kitten.  Standing in the bathroom, unsteady, he makes
it known, “Me love everyone.”

His heart is
open wide like the sky, filled with light and shifting colors that wash across
his face with every changing emotion. 
This boy of mine moves so quickly soaking in the joy and light of each
moment, no matter the shade. 

Last night
he marched happy through the kitchen with a giant bowl of plain rigatoni tucked
under his arm.  He didn’t get to go to
the Halloween parade with Daddy and his older siblings and when his twin
brother asked about the plan, he replied, “Me stay home with Mommy . . . and
the noodles.” 

When I asked
what he loved more – Mommy or the noodles – “Me love noodles,” was his
smiling reply. 

//

To love what
is passing, to open one’s heart to what is in each moment, is to live deeply,
fully.  No one pleasure or delight lasts
for long and in its passing we expose ourselves to potential loss and
grief.  But to live closed off from each moment for fear of its passing is to rob ourselves of much that is truly precious in this life.

Knowing this, I bend my cheek to receive the kisses, I turn my head toward the window, I run toward the rainbow, toward each passing moment to embrace it with arms open wide as I teach my heart to say, “Me love,” over and over again. 

This post is linked with Five Minute Friday on the prompt “long.”