via Email

I email my older kids a lot these days which is a little odd if you consider that these children and I spend most of our waking moments together.  Usually my emails originate at night, after they've put their growing frames into bed. I love to read...had you heard? I find merit in online reading as well as plain old-fashioned book reading and during these online escapades I find little blurbs of information that are interesting to me and I wonder if maybe a friend or one of my sisters might benefit from my find and so I share these things sometime via email. Now and then I'll even come across an article that a fine-looking preacher may be interested in and I email him too. It is with increasing frequency, though that I find things that I think my kids should read. 

Sometimes I'll send them recipes like this one that I know they'll be willing to attempt with me. Other times, I'll send Cole an article on a sports figure or an issue that has been getting lots of air time on ESPN or maybe it'll be an odd bit of trivia that has touched both of our worlds like an article on Sriracha sauce. Meg often receives links to blog posts from writers whose work we both admire like Annie Downs and Ann Voskamp or maybe even Emily P. Freeman, three women whose writings cause us to ponder big topics and small ones alike.

When I go throughout my day, taking in the sights and sounds of it, I consider how those very sights and sounds will be absorbed by the kids. Will they see it in the same light that I have, or will they come at that topic from a different point of view? Will a book that has lit my fire light theirs? Some of my favorite conversations with the kids have begun with their current event assignments. It's every bit as interesting to find out what they've chosen to report as is the report itself.

It's not all butterflies and basketballs as the weeks and months progress. There are on occasion, strongly held opinions that stand firm and deep and there are also volatile emotions that spill over the edges once in a while. I hear from those who've gone before me that all of this is to be expected and experienced and maybe even embraced as part of a healthy process of growing up. While I'm all about the healthy part, I'm still working on that growing up reality. 

I'm watching those bodies grow right up past me, to heights I've never reached (and without a stool never will)! I'm also watching those minds grow and what a gift to behold. 

I like to think that my little emails might help to fill those minds with little drips and drops of things I find interesting and think are worth their attention. What I really want them to know, more than anything, whether via email or by sitting across the table from me or beside me on the couch, is that what I find ridiculously interesting and highly worthy of my attention is them, both who they are now, and who they are becoming, and who they will be after that. 

...and also, I really really want who-they-are-becoming and who-they-will-be-after-that to send me interesting emails every now and again too!