I fought the wind unsuccessfully. It’s Kansas, after all. The wind tends to win most days. I escaped to the refuge of my mini van. A moment of quiet accompanied me as I sat untangling all the strings and colorful ribbons of my son’s kite. He patiently waited outside watching his brothers and the dog.
I remember asking for help untangling things as a child. And teen. And adult. I blamed my inability to loosen the knots on my constantly bitten nails. “Do you have any nails? Can you help me with this?” I asked those near me.
Wait a second. When did I become the untangler?
I suppose at the precise moment when I became “the mother.” I became the one my flailing children needed. I quickly learned to untangle footed pajamas and wet wipes in the night. I routinely untangled the tubing to my breast pump. As my children grew, I’ve bent over a million times or so to untangle their knotted shoestrings. “Come sit down. Watch a show,” I would often say as I untangled the back of my toddler boys’ heads of matted blonde hair. Their rabbit fine blonde hair has championed the greatest or worst bed head title for years.
It’s an art form: untangling. I never imagined I would be any good at it. I guess it takes practice. And patience. A willingness to pull, tug and gently make a difference. Sometimes, you’re thrown into situations and you’re the only one seemingly capable enough. You’re suddenly “the most grown up” in the room. With all the giant greenish brown eyes looking up to you, you have to do something. You adapt. You must be willing to learn on the job. In the midst of the tangles. The many different tangles of parenting.
Some knots are trickier than others. Some knots require more time, more experience, and a bigger investment. Some produce more tears of frustration and confusion. Untangling words and heated arguments between brothers, while remaining every boy’s loving mother, puts even the baddest ugliest quadruple knot to shame. A mama has to learn to tap into her emotional savings account: the wisdom and advice and encouragement of others. Thank, God for their listening ears, their stories, and their graceful ability to resuscitate my mothering soul.
Am I doing it right? Am I doing it wrong? Will tomorrow be better? Less competitive? Holy moly. This is hard. Can I have my grabby toothless babies back for a few moments? Just for a moment of bliss. A moment of mundane. And a moment of hard to remind me that it’s not all rainbows in the past either. My mothering moments seem all tangled up in my thoughts and the steady beating of my heart. Ten years and three boys full of moments. Raw moments. Heavenly moments. Silly moments. Growing moments. Perhaps if they’re all tangled together, I won’t lose them as easily.
The other day I walked down to my in-law’s dock to grab the leftover towels and shoes. I looked down and noticed a struggling sky-blue dragonfly trapped in a sticky spiderweb. Lake spiders don’t mess around with their giant intricately designed webs. “Oh, you poor, dragonfly. I will help you,” I said. I think he understood or he thought I was the spider. I gently pulled the googley-eyed dragonfly out of the sticky web. I held him in the palm of my hand. Then, I used my giant fingers to delicately untangle the web from the dragonfly’s wings. He couldn’t fly. The sticky web clung to his feet and his four wings, but he only squirmed a bit while I performed a webectomy. Then, just like that, he flew off. “Oh, goodbye,” I said. It was a magical moment. I thought I should hop into the kayak and get to work, untangling all of the webs off of the backs of the trapped dragonflies before the sun set. But I needed to get my own dragonfly boys home to bed.
When we learn the beauty of untangling life’s knots in one area, perhaps we give ourselves the confidence to attempt to untangle knots outside of our typical comfort zone. I’m grateful to untangle yo-yo strings, matted hair, my husband’s cables, the dog’s clumped up ear hair, and dragonfly wings. How strange and magnificent are the lessons we learn when things get knotted up.
I was watching a tear jerker of a video* today that a friend posted. A middle-aged man desperately needed to lose weight. He was morbidly obese and his nutritionist told him to go adopt a dog from the shelter. It would encourage him to be outside and he would meet people. The man purposely adopted an overweight middle-aged dog, so they could relate to each other. They immediately bonded. Both of their lives changed for good. They lost weight and both had more positive outlooks on life. I cried when he talked about lying down next to his dying dog. At the end, he questioned whether he rescued the dog or the dog rescued him. They rescued each other. My four year old son wanted to watch the video twice.
Something's Burning 