cut open

After living for 13 years in a house without windows, the silence and the stiffness of this house are suffocating. All the windows were painted shut from the outside, and dad could tell I needed OPEN.

Our very first day he bought a razor and cut the windows, and though I know our neighbors find it bizarre, it's common to find our front and back doors wide open, the windows all as wide as they will go.  None of the windows or doors have screens, of course, and yesterday a bird flew into our living room, chirping up a storm.

Which made me remember the day that Roselore caught the little bird that flew into our porch, and asked if she could take it home. Her five children were hungry. 

Today it quickly realized it was trapped and flew right back out, but long enough to make me feel at home.

The girls have just as quickly Ayars'd the neighborhood. They take Lady Jane's dog on a walk for her every day at 1. They weed with Ms. Carol and Poor Ed every time they are out. At 2:30 or three, we walk the neighborhood, through the town, part of the Nachez trail and back again, 2 or 3 miles every day, and at four, they gather with the neighborhood kids down the road to chatter and observe until dinner, which suddenly takes me 30 minutes to assemble instead of 2 hours to create.

Tonight Lily noted that the kids all call them spider monkeys. She says it's because she and Sofie climb trees, and Sofie quickly chipped in her observation that "Americans can't climb trees, they always wear shoes, and they are afraid of snakes."

Our neighbors a few houses down have a little boy a few months older than Ben, fighting cancer his whole life, doing a six week stretch of chemo with mom and son in hospital while dad and five year old are home alone. She and Nora have quickly blossomed over stuffed animals, and I'm so thankful for quick friends for each of the girls, and will be thankful for the day we can have them for dinner instead of take it to them...that we can have the two widows beside and behind the house for lunch on Sundays instead of calling back and forth from the lawn, that we take the girls to church, that we can meet other families at Wesley. I know we are all looking forward to the same things.

Isolation...toddlers with cancer...starting all over, all over, is hard.  

It helps when the windows are open.

Lord, come in.