Little-ton

I had a dentist appointment yesterday, which was a delight because my dentist and I are tight. I used to date her nephew and, consequently, spent a good part of my senior year of high school watching movies in her basement and Rocky Mountain sunsets from her back porch. She had two appointments cancel at the same time yesterday, so she did all the stuff that the hygenist usually does and it ended up being about 30% tooth cleaning and 70% talking and laughing and catching up. Later I stopped by the grocery store I used to work at to take advantage of a sweet cherry sale and was shocked when one of my old managers not only remembered me but also pretty much everything about my life, including stuff I don't even ever remember having mentioned. This morning, my sister Abby and I packed up a lunch of yogurt and cherries and set off on foot for Barnes and Noble a few miles across town. On the way back, we stopped at church to kick it for a while with my high school youth ministers. Halfway home, we found a baseball lying abandoned in the grass, one of those perfectly worn, dusty baseballs, and we tossed it back and forth the rest of the way. We spent the rest of the day writing letters and reading books. (And also making fun of pictures in her middle school yearbook).

We were walking today, and honestly, Littleton isn't really that little. They only named it that because Mediumton sounded like something in a Ray Bradbury book about the bleak and beige-colored future. I like it when I can string together enough moments I can arrive at by walking or biking and where everyone knows my name (and they're always glad I came) to pretend that I really do live in a small town, though. So we were walking, and I was carrying one of those big purses that's almost too big to still qualify as a purse, and I was wearing sunglasses and capris and making Abby walk on the inside of the sidewalk and instinctively grabbing her hand and giving cars an I-don't-trust-you look every time we crossed a street, and I finally realized, halfway to Barnes and Noble, that I felt like a mom. Not her mom, necessarily... those days ended when she finally got tall enough for her teachers and her classmates' soccer moms to stop giving me disapproving looks every time I came to pick her up from school.

"Oh, so you're Abby's...?" they'd trail off.
"Sister," I'd say with a laugh that I'd always make sound even more fake than it actually was. Which was a lot. Because man oh man, they were annoying. Just once, I wanted to reply with a "DON'T JUDGE ME!" or better yet, a "You don' knOOOOOW me! Only Jesus know me!"
"Oh of course!" they'd flightily reply. "Of course, I just... well, you never do know these days!"
Nope, nope you certainly don't.

Aaanyrate, I didn't feel like her mom, just a mom. With my big mom purse containing my Seven Storey Mountain and her brand new li-berry book and my cell phone and her Sunny Delight, and my mom sunglasses, and this strage, new sensation of protectiveness (which I hear is also a mom thing... not really a my mom thing... but then again, while most of the other moms were teaching their young daughters how to braid their hair and use their Easy Bake Ovens, mine was pointing out drug references in popular music), and with the taking a walk on a sunny day with a hyperactive little girl skipping a few steps ahead or a few steps behind me, I felt very... well... motherly. And I liked it.

I've been blessed with a few good friends who, though the world rolls its collective eyes at such an old-fashioned and simple-minded notion for good young educated modern men and women, still consider it their primary vocation to be a parent. The first time I heard one of them talk about it, I couldn't stop smiling at the sincerity in their voice. What a beautiful and humble act of courage it is, witnessing a 20-something-year-old undergraduate at one of the most prestigious universities in the country respond, "You know honestly, above all else, I want to be a parent. I want to raise a family," when someone asks, as someone always does, what it is they plan to do with their life. Maybe they follow it up with some career goals or a hazy picture of where they see themself in 10 or 20 years, but it's always "a mom" or "a dad" that they mention first. It makes me proud to have such friends, and it gives me courage to respond similarly. I used to exempt motherhood from the "what are you going to do with your life" question because it seemed like a given. Marraige? Children? Of course. Lately, though, something has catapaulted the idea of being a wife and mother out of the "background info" category for me, I think because I've come to understand it as the vocation it is. I went almost 20 years without comprehending what we mean when we pray that our earthly families are reflections of God's perfect love. To think of it that way, though, that although we are to be instruments of God's love in our every thought and word and act, it is only within our families that this divine love is most perfectly embodied... to aspire to live out the vocation of wifehood and motherhood is to aspire to help create heaven on earth. I can't think of anything more incredible.

Anyway it was a long walk to Barnes and Noble. Lot to think about. Especially when you're carrying a mom purse.