Translation

We have been living the hermit existence of a sick family this week. Aside from furtive rushes into pharmacy, grocery store and library for supplies to weather the storm, these four walls have been our space and us four, each other’s company.

With the distractions of work and schoolwork and church gatherings and daily commerce peeled away, I appreciate again the intimacy of family life. We know every inch of these little people in such detail, and can track symptoms and emotion as they play across their features.

Joshua curls next to me on the sofa. The bristly hair against my fingertips is like no other texture I’ve ever felt. He gets a fever hard and fast, this one-- as I hold him and read aloud, I can feel the heat through his Spiderman pajamas and see the glaze over his eyes as he sinks into my side. Thankfully, the fever reducer works equally quickly; he will be jumping around and chattering nineteen to the dozen in a half an hour. Sam always grips my upper arm for comfort, looping both hands around my bicep. When this little morning buddy chooses thumb and blanket over granola bar, he really doesn’t feel good.

This knowledge can come only through the crucible of family life closely lived. I can still remember the surge of competence we felt when we were first able to crack the codes of cries, facial expressions and body postures. The pouched lips and puffed cheeks of the teether, the waxes and wanes of appetite and growing pains, the little skirmishes and irritations that called for more sleep. Bodies and faces and tones to be learned by heart.

The trick seems to be, as they grow, when they are well and we are flown to the routines and relationships of daily life, to stay schooled in them. To be able to read the hurts and happiness they may not tell us, and to respond. The quiet that needs to be drawn out into conversation versus the quiet that needs only its own company. The anger acted out that sprouted from an earlier hurt. The over-eager helpfulness that whispers, “I need to be close to you right now.”

And then to hold, in the tension of paradox where being a parent is best lived out, the humility of the knowledge that we cannot and should not meet every need, the ones we interpret and understand and the ones that remain in all ways unspoken. They have a Maker who is the only one who can fill their deepest longings. We are the caretakers, with Motrin and cookies and cuddles and Little House and “You Are My Sunshine” and new crayons and the grace to translate and speak the language of family.