Siblings

Yesterday I watched four Dunphey grandchildren so Danica could get her teeth cleaned at the dentist. She brought Cecily with her, of course. The kids were just finishing lunch and starting KP as I arrived and the changing of the guard took place.

After that, they all dressed for winter and went out to play, donned in a myriad of boots, mittens, and suits. Black size 10, Orange was a 7/8, size 4 Red suit, and Purple 2, marching across the snow in perfect order.

There they were, all playing together in a huge white expanse which all sloped downward, covered in a sheet of ice. Jump on the saucer and whiz down the whole of it, right to the shrubbery thickly bordering the entire bottom edge.

They looked like tiny doll house figures with the whole winter world as a blank canvas backdrop. Poetry in motion.

I smiled as I looked out on that field through the large picture window and saw those precious figures lined up, marching to the starting place. I laughed at the antics as they zipped down, then turned and ran, and eventually trudged, back to the top to do it all again.

And I cried a bit too, knowing they would not always be there doing that, remembering, too, my own snow-suited and mittened children running and laughing in my own backyard once upon a time while I stood watching out my own picture window, just as I was today, happy yet touched with sorrow, wanting to hold that moment forever and knowing I could not.

And so, a poem for all my daughters and their children:

Day follows day
They work, they play
They belong to each other.

They squabble, they share
They learn to care
They belong to each other.

Like stars in the night,
Like candles and light,
They belong to each other.

Ordained by God
To grow in love
They belong to each other.