Yesterday, Joey's plastic train officially chugged itself out of life. Today, Addy's plastic talking dollhouse - drained. "It doesn't work, Mommy," Joey affirms, holding up a tiny vacuum cleaner that, for seven short days, plugged into its dollhouse outlet to make a four second whirring sound. The same one Joey makes on rainy afternoons when an airplane whizzes across his imagination.
I gave the house six new triple A tries last week. Today, all six officially failed the test of even mediocre sale price quality. On the other hand, Joey's Duracell's have charged and chugged for almost a year. What to do with these lifeless plastic patients scattered in my basement? Instinct nearly jumped me up, running to grab my surgical screwdriver and a fistful of those powercharged tubes from the closet stockpile, then race back downstairs and, with confident craftsmanship - unscrew, remove, replace, and rescrew talking, moving life back into my children's toy universe.
Instead, I felt a peculiar pause. Next, a draw towards my phone (our computer is with Danny in Chicago), and a blip of inspiration to write.
When Joey wants to play with his train set, we dump out over fifty various sized track, train, and accessory pieces. Between the three of us and Dude, we each entrust, more or less, the same unimpressive engineering capability. The only reason I wind up as architect is because my fingers have 30 years of dexterity built into them. Joey - two. Addy - nearly four. One day, at the vertex of generations, we will interchange abilities, and both of them will race ahead as I run, maybe speed walk in tears, behind. We can't catch those moving, transparent years of change, fastidious as we may try, when life suddenly glimmers in a place your memory doesn't remember. One day they won't remember needing me because they won't. At least, not to assemble a train track.
So after a tense twenty minute experiment of confused construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction, I typically wind up searching desperately for just one more of those curvy pieces to connect that small, I-almost-got-it gap (usually found upstairs under the couch, shirking its duties with an assortment of other temporarily misplaced items).
Once I extract the final puzzle piece from its hiding place and snap it into the maze - whala! Joey can get at it. He will proceed to place the train on the track then will pick up a plastic lever that he can push or pull an inch either way, appointing himself pleasant dictator of the train's directional fate. Other than a few rearrangements of accessories (trees, railroad crossing signs, etc.), Joey remains idle, observing from the side as battery lungs puff Chinese plastic up and around and through - over, and over, and over again. The train moves. He sits. Writing now, I realize how strange it is to watch a child watch plastic play for him.
Addy is sitting on her knees, low to the ground, perfecting her tiny, colorful plastic dollhouse people. "They are having an outdoor party," she informs me quietly without looking up. I hadn't asked her a question. But she could feel me thinking behind her, mesmerized by her long attention and focus. Maybe she wanted to reassure me by her unprompted response that she was just fine, mom. That batteries whirring four seconds of sound would not affect her in the least. She was letting me know that I can fix something that feels "off" just by writing. She has an amazing gift of intuition, something she is teaching me to attune; the faint low sound of our mind creating thought only when we listen. So I do, writing what I know I should.
Our house is full of plastic. I know we will buy and continue, with true gratitude, to receive battery operated plastic toys. Big and small. Inexpensive to wildly exorbitant. I don't feel a tugging judgment of disdain against these toys or a need to replace them with sticks and rocks and various sized pasta. In fact, I find them almost comforting these days, visual reminders after we put the kids to bed, all four of us exhausted, that, yes indeed, we do have kids. Here's the mess to prove it. But what inspired me to write versus replacing all those dead batteries today is that I know how much life churns and bursts and stirs inside my children, inside of me. We have hands to move, legs to run and jump, voices to create boisterous sounds of chugging trains and whirring vacuums and every other noisy jarbled undecipherable expression of our imaginations that swings us from jungle vines and throws outdoor parties indoors. God gave us these gifts - our children, of course, and all that life sizzling within them, within ourselves. And while some days I feel drained and ready to flip my switch to off, it is God's blessings, namely, my love for my kids, their love for me, that teaches me just how irreplaceable they are, how irreplaceable today is.
Joey returns to me after wandering around in aimless agenda, still holding the tiny plastic vacuum. "Mommy, it doesn't work," he reminds me again. I ask him to hand it to me. I crouch down on the ground with him like a magician about to reveal her trick. Addy leaves her outdoor party, curious.
"Watch this kids."
Then, charging my own inner battery, the one I sometimes think is too tired to work, I start to make a loud funny whirring sound, creating fast moving little vacuum lines in the basement carpet. Laughing, I see their eyes light up. That sparkling little light of joy inside of them that flashes excitedly when they are reminded that they, too, have magical powers that can animate toys to life, fly planes with their imaginations, and make plastic vacuums come alive the very moment they do.
Then I know. Here Jesus is - our spiritual charger - inside my basement, inside my words - His grace recharging me, recharging us all with the one irreplaceable, unending, unfailing power source - His love. It is what moves us, lifts us, charges us, and provides us with all that we are and all that we have. And in unexpected and sometimes funny ways, by His love He performs everyday miracles, great and small.
Today's miracle? He stopped me to play, paused me to write, then used lifeless plastic toys to move me.
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