Just Don't Look Down

In what things do I find great joy lately? Does joy happen to us or in spite of us?

My son went up 6 stories and challenged us all to the 60 foot canopy challenge at Natural Bridge Caverns in New Braunfels, TX.  We conquered our fears as my nine year old muttered, “Just don’t look down.”  How simple could it have been when my heart was racing and ready to pound out of my adult chest?  I think Erasmo and I climbed that high only because we were afraid he’d fall, harnessed in or not.  He surprised me many times over.  I thought he would be afraid of heights and that he would be too anxious to try, but I believed in him whether he followed through or not.  With his tiny physique, combed over ashy blonde hair and eyes large as almonds, he climbed higher and higher without apology.  We cheered him on and told him how incredible we thought he was for doing what we would never dare to do had it not been for him leading the way.  He was so brave.

We taught my daughter how to use chopsticks last weekend.  I loved watching her giggle at something I take for granted because I already know how to use them.  Her hair was in perfect swoops of awesome across her face.  I wanted to clip her bangs onto her head a little higher with a bobby pin.  Her glasses plunged off of her face in a daring and move-outta-my-way manner, but that’s the style these days.  My grandmother even told me, after viewing the picture of all of us after the fact, that I was torturing my own daughter by having her wear such big glasses, “que anteojos tan grandes!”  She’s a beautiful young girl and not because she’s my own.  She’s so much her own person and I forget that at one point I also became my own person so unlike my mother and grandmother.  Only later in life, after battling hard and landing many punches, do I get that we are exactly like our parents.  First, we must live.

I want to believe that joy happens in spite of us.  My children bring me joy.  In spite of who I am, who I was and who I have yet to become, they are joy.  Joy in spite of me.