Yes I'm writing about my July lavender harvest in September! It's apropos really, read on.
This year's harvest, my third, since I began growing my lavender patch "test plot" of fifty graceful and stunning plants was so different than previous harvests. Past harvests were spent scampering around, cutting lavender, dripping with sweat and thinking "why does this smell so lovely and yet I'm not enjoying this?" as I sandwiched time to harvest between camping trips, family outings, and art festivals. This year was different, not because life wasn't as full and busy as usual but because I made a choice to sit and be still; to work unhurried, to let the sweat roll off my brow and appreciate that 95 degrees at nine in the morning on a hot summer day in Idaho is part of the package of living where I love. I took moments to stop and inhale deeply of the intoxicating aroma that beckons me to days gone by where life was unhurried. I listened to the sounds of our little homestead in the city: our chickens clucking nearby, the birds chirping overhead, our dog barking at a passerby, and cars scurrying down the highway nearby. My neighbor dropped by to chat as I worked and she harvested a bouquet to enjoy in her kitchen. My daughter stepped out to ask if I was still making pancakes that day. And my ten year old son dropped by to help bundle and stack lovely little aromatic lavender bouquets.
What was different exactly? Me. I chose to let time pass me by while I sat still in the lavender patch taking it all in; being quiet, reflective, prayerful. Letting those around me pop in without feeling the need to protect the quiet still moment I was enjoying.
These moments in the lavender patch are small glimpses of the new skills I am learning in this career we call motherhood. As my children are growing and leaving my nest, there's this intense desire to clutch them, to hold on for dear life. The desire to keep what I have is so intense, I feel it in the depths of my soul. My oldest son's entire senior year I wanted to flash freeze and not let another moment pass our family by. But after eighteen years of holding that babe in my arms, the most difficult of motherhood tasks came: to let go. It's an irony to be sure. Our entire goal as a mom is to grow them up; but then when they've accomplished the goal, it's like really? I'm just supposed to let them fly off? I found myself wanting to create these great family moments where we were all together having a grand time. I quickly discovered that a moment can't be created, it must be caught and reveled in as it passes by.
So now as my son has headed off to his second year at the university, and my daughter embarks on her senior year, and my youngest son finishes elementary school I stand at this precipice in time, a choice: to hold on to what I am losing or to revel in what I have. I choose to revel. Not that there aren't still many moments where I secretly mourn the passing of family life, but I now see there is still so much family life to be had as it moves and grows and changes. And as I sharpen my skills of letting go, it invites my children to experience a fullness in their own life, to explore uninhibited. And the still watchful mom can continue to revel in and celebrate these moments as they pass by.
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