Cradle of Stones and a Bluebonnet Story

This weekend I spent laughing and visiting with my friend Nikki from back home. There are certain places that I have to take those who visit us in Branson: Dicks 5 and 10 is among them. It is every ADHD child/adults dream. It is a cracker jack box of primary colors, it's a circus of pop culture icons from every decade since Elvis and in between the narrow aisles and merchandise stacked upon merchansise are tourists and little tiny old people handling tokens that remind them from the past. I foud Curt in the toy aisle lost in thought, running his fingers along a box of army guys. "When we have our kids," he said, "We're going to come here to buy them toys." This is how he talks about it, through slips of hope when he remembers something from his own childhood that he wants to see a little one do just like he did, specifically a pirate ship made of legos. This Christmas I found a pirate lego ship kit on line and ordered it for him. He sat alone at the kitchen table and built a ship that came with a shark and a treasure chest that had a hinge and four plastic diamonds you could set inside. I wasn't much for playing with toys as a child, but Sarah and I were into stories, art, plays, music, creating anything with paper and crayons (I loved the smell of crayons and couldn't stand for them to be dull or not in rainbow order...except when I was going through an alphabetical phase). I wandered around the store looking for something that I would want to pass on if we did have children of our own. In the very back corner of the store were some story books. Curt and I played with the ones that had puppets in them and we laughed as he experimented with giving barn animals different voices. He is going to be so great at this...on a shelf next to some Nancy Drew books was a picture book called, "The Legend of the Bluebonnets". Recognition and familiarity immediately rushed to my eyes and heart. This story was a story that we had heard all through growing up from "Claire tapes". Claire was a story teller in Texas who lived in a beautiful old barn made into a house in the middle of a big grassy field. She had an old paint horse. My Poppa and Granny would have her read Sarah and I stories and record them. We listened to them until they couldn't be listened to anymore. I bought the book with intentions to give it to my sister, Sarah (I haven't bought anything for "someday baby" in a year) who has been collecting Claire's story books. I read it before I went to sleep, and woke up thinking about it. I brought it to work with me this morning, the book having gained a new purpose overnight. Before the school day started, I found a particular student that had been placed on my heart. I called the child to my desk and asked him if he would do me a favor. He was very unsure of the situation and hesitant- he thought he was in trouble. I said, "You know how when y'all ask me if we are ever going to have kids, and I say no because we teach and that pretty much ruined it for us?" (side note: My kids KNOW that I am joking. It's a defense mechanism to ward off their questions. They think it's funny and say things like, "What about me, Mrs. Ivey? You can't mean me. I'm sure you want 10 just like me." And then we joke about this back and forth.) The boy at my desk says slowly, "Yesssss..." I can't look at him because I don't want to cry. "Because we don't have any of our own, we sometimes want to share things with other kids that we would have passed on to our own. You understand?" He nods again and says that yes he does understand. "You would be doing me a very big favor if you took this little book from me," I tell him. "I was read this story when I was a little girl. I think you'll like it to." He smiled a little and says, "Sure." And then he gave me a little hug before he went to his first hour. A little bit of mothering went a lovely long way for me today. I hope against hope that this little boy treasures that story, if even for just today.

On the way to work this morning, I asked God, "What can be worse than an empty cradle?" He said to me right away, "A cradle full of stones." He went on to tell me that every worry was a stone filling up a cradle and I keep carrying it around, setting it down only when it becomes unbearable, but then back up again in my arms. "You cherish those stones. You love them, you coddle them, you cry over them, you worship them and cradle them." If I never become a biological mother, may the Good Lord who created me send me thousands of little boys and girls who would honor me by taking a token of my own childhood, or sharing their childhood with me. I was a mother today, if only for a moment. And I am in love and in awe of how wonderful the experience was.