Cannoli and other sweet things

When Jonah was two days old, Guy left the house for a little while and returned with a lovely bunch of flowers. Many of the flowers were closed, and it has taken them a whole week to open and show off their full glory.
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But that was not all he brought. A few minutes after bringing in the flowers, he returned to our room with a silver platter bedecked with pure manna from heaven; cannoli surrounded by an assortment of other Italian pastries too delicious for mere words. We sat together and sampled and nibbled. They were divine, and I relished them, guilt-free. But I don’t think I appreciated them fully, like the flowers, until last night.
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Guy and I sat last night with the computer on one lap, the baby on the other, and puttered around the web looking for the names of the confections we had enjoyed. We looked up the recipes, ogled over the different varieties and chatted about how to make them, though they were too complex to seriously be undertaken by amateurs such as ourselves. It was only after I knew how much had gone into them that I could really appreciate them.

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In the past few days I have been the recipient of so many kindnesses. Calls and visits have come, and with them, home cooked meals, cakes and pies and gifts for the baby. My friend Joanna will not tolerate verbal appreciation, yet she keeps doing things that make me want to hold her down and yell “THANK YOU!!!!” in her face a million times. Steph and Nicole “babysat” me the two days Guy needed to work, and others have offered time and energy in so many ways. Not a day has gone by that someone hasn’t checked in on me.

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But the best came yesterday when my husband told me that he was taking a few more days off work to stay with me. In the years we have been together, the times when I have felt most helpless have been those first few days that he would go back to work after a baby or a miscarriage. When he would leave, I felt like he was taking all of the oxigen with him. I knew he had planned to go back to work tomorrow, and a heaviness came upon me as I tried to figure out how I could be ready to take over my job as mom as a solo gig again. Guy has missed the first week of school as the teacher of a new class, at a new school with new staff, and a new administrator. I know it has been a huge conflict for him as he juggles being needed there and being needed here. But he chose to be here.

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I was counseled a few days ago, in my struggles with the blues I have been feeling, to focus on the joy. The joy of this sweet babe and of the blessing of being his mama. As I lift my spiritual eyes to see beyond the cluttered landscape that my weepy mortal eyes are fixed on, I see all of the sweet, heartfelt prayers that have been whispered on our behalf. I see friends who now celebrate with us, who were also here for us before there was a reason to celebrate. I see a good husband who had to grieve and still be the strong one so that I would have some one to catch me as I fell, over and over again, and who now tends to me so sweetly. As I try to focus on the joy, the beauty in the past 10 days opens to me like the flowers, and is more appreciated than before.

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He’s in the kitchen right now washing dishes and singing songs with Ethan as he makes lunches for tomorrow.

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Isn’t that sweet?