Don't trip.
a poem (plus a video recording)
Don’t Trip
Don’t trip over the firetruck
in the shower, the one waiting
beside the soap. It is set to be
healed in the morning by a
mini-mechanic who is still
sleeping in her toddler bed.
She will soon rise and give it a
proper tune-up, not with plastic
tools, but with her doctor’s kit,
which is missing an otoscope,
but includes a rogue flashlight.
Do not trip over the truck’s
cousin toys, left rolling on the
floor, perched by the basement
door, arranged in perfect
fighting position. Do not curse,
as though they were the enemy.
They are the heroes in our story;
the block-scattered heartbeat that
you strained to hear all those times
when there was only silence on the
other end of the doctor’s doppler.
The dinosaur stickers that will not
come off the hardwood floor are
actually small, snarled-toothed saints.
They pray for you.
Like you prayed for them.
Do not trip over joy,
which is often hiding behind
the chaos that exasperates us.
You might break your neck one
day, but at least you will die happy.
Yep! Smiled and cried through this article.
As a mom who went through decades of infertility and became a mom through another woman's faith decision to let us raise her daughter, so many things I cared less about.
When all you want to do is get up in the middle of night for the cries of a baby, I was thrilled to hear the stirring of an infant late at night (tired but thrilled). My older sister once fed Jordan's Christmas cookies on the 26th for breakfast saying she waited a decade for a niece or nephew to share cookies and not one minutes she was missisng no matter she might be wired for a few hours!
At my mom's funeral, my uncle shared "my sister's motto was "why clean when you could read a book, play Monopoly, go walk in the park and feed the ducks, and put a child on a stool to stir cookie dough."
"Do not trip over joy,
which is often hiding behind
the chaos that exasperates us.
You might break your neck one
day, but at least you will die happy."
Such a beautifully written and much-needed reminder - thank you!