imperfect prose on thursdays: when the day seems a toilet-paper kind of blank

It’s just nine in the morning, and I’m wishing to hear the garage door sliding shut, meaning Trenton is home, his bike parked.

And I’ve never told him, because I’m too embarrassed of needing him this way. This desperate schoolgirl way that jumps when I hear him stepping towards the door.

It’s only nine and I know we’re doing a good thing, taking in two more boys, and God is blessing us, and I’m not trying to be a super-hero. But I miss having just two boys. I miss sorting out my day calmly, as though it were laundry, towels from napkins, silks from cotton.

I used to cut Aiden’s peanut butter and honey toast, and I’d read my Bible while he ate it in his high-chair watching Thomas the Train, Trent bringing up Kasher from his crib after showering and me spooning pabulum and handing Trent his lunch and watching him bike off to the school where he’s a math and Bible teacher.

Before we became foster parents, the two boys and I would sometimes take the wagon to the store where we’d use our co-op share number to get groceries, and then we’d poke our heads in the window at the school and watch Trent teach.

But these days it’s caring for four boys under the age of four: filling sippy cups and buttering toast and cleaning up banana squished to the floor and changing dirty diapers and searching for socks that match. These days it’s Trent calling by the stairs, “Do you have a lunch for me?” and me, still in my bathrobe, not having had my coffee, thinking about the three books I’ve been contracted to write.

It’s nine now, and Aiden and Joey have had two time-outs because they’re both sick and extremely needy and fighting over everything. Jin has stuck his hand in the toilet and dumped porridge on his head, and Kasher has fallen down the stairs in his walker because I forgot to close the gate after feeding the guinea pig.

(Will you join me over at The High Calling today, for the rest of the story, friends? And don’t forget to link your imperfect prose, below! Love, e.)

1. link up a post (old or new) that you feel is ‘broken’ or ‘imperfect’ or somehow redemptive
2. put the ‘imperfect prose’ button at the bottom of your post, so others can find their way back here (see button code in right-hand column of my blog)
3. read other’s prose, and encourage them!

Image by Teymur Madjderey. Used with permission. Sourced via Flickr.