Sunday Slivers, 2/20/11: Happy Birth Day, Noe...

My dearest friend gave birth to her first child, daughter Noe, this week. Everyone had been waiting for this bunny to enter the world, two weeks past her due date, and I found myself fighting back tears at the news of her healthy birth. This would not be surprising at all, if not for the fact that I almost never cry, even when I am deeply moved.
So, why did I?...Besides the obvious fact that this is my closest friend, and it therefore feels like my sister just grew another human being, it also has much to do with the fact that my children have given me the most meaningful experiences of my life: the hardest, the most joyous, the least expected, the most fulfilling. It used to embarrass me (three years ago?) that I found an hour spent with my son more meaningful than a three-hour seminar devoted to allegory in medieval epic. I used to chastise myself, silently, for wanting to take Sava to the park rather than leave him with a nanny or drop him off at daycare.
I didn't know consciously then what I have come to embrace now, which is that life is damn short and it is worth living as it feels right to us.  Like each child, every adult is different, and what makes one person happy may drive another person to the looney house. There is no such thing as a bad choice, as long as we choose with conviction, passion, and self-understanding.
I wish Noe and her sweet parents many happy times together. I expect that they'll rock out this whole family, parenting, and childhood thing. I know they will.
*****
That bunny on the picture above greeted us on the edge of the path at the end of a lovely hike today. I am not a big fan of paved paths for nature walks, but it had been a while since we'd gone to this big reservoir bordering the highway between our end of the bay and San Francisco, and the view was definitely worth it (when asked how he liked the walk, which had been rather windy, Sava replied, I liked the view, but I didn't like the coldness; at what point exactly do they learn to articulate things like, "I liked the view"?).

 We saw a deer, and everything smelled of spring--

Raya barely walked, mostly choosing to sit on her bike while one of us pushed, or being carried in daddy's limousine; Sava scooted, and enjoyed "the view"--

If someone could pay me to walk in nature every day, miles upon miles, day after day, I'd take the job. Nothing gives me deeper joy, other than possibly teaching kids how to read good books.
*****
Earlier in the week, it rained and rained and rained...If you wonder what one does with two children cooped up by rain that would not stop (as in, not even for thirty minutes) for forty-eight hours, the answer is, things get a bit loopy. As long as no one gets hurt between dawn and dusk, it has been a successful day--

 

 

There is the mandatory trip to the Children's Museum, too, where big brother contentedly plays with a few things--

--while little sister plows through every exhibit that involves fluids or foreign matter on her hands and body--

Three changes of clothes and two tired bunnies later, we call it a day and hope that the next morning when we awake the rain will have let up a bit.

And it did. And tomorrow we wake to a Monday holiday, and a morning with the potential for time spent outside. Life is good.