What Really Matters... To Me

A woman on a bike with a kiddie trailer behind it pauses at the stop sign and asks her young son which way he wants to go to the library. He is on a bike so small you could step over it with no effort. He is on a bike that requires no balance, no pedals. He walk-rides his little bike with equally little legs. He wants to go this way. Mom suggests that way, but he wants to go this way, so she says Okay. Then they take off, mom turning the way her son wants to; her son taking off straight in a near collision with her. But then he turns, and they pass my house on their way to the library. That really matters to me.

My heart cracks at the adorability of the son finding his way in this world, balancing and falling and exploring, which will lead to... We don't know where he will go as he grows. That not knowing really matters to me.

And the sky is blue above the mom and son (and also on whomever it might be who rides along in the kiddie trailer behind), and there is peace in the air. Beautiful skies and peace really matter to me, and so does the library down the street that houses so much wonder, we would all explode if we tried to take it all in. That little boy will walk into the wonder and choose to let in just a bit. And that little bit might take him to other lands, to new learning, and wild imagination. Wonder and imagination really matter to me.

Even though my son and daughter are now old enough to be parents, their little legs are still just as real to me as the legs of that little boy walk-riding his bike down the street. As with that mother, the mothering within me is as alive as ever, though I now channel it many directions, because my son and daughter don't need the mothering of a child, though they do need as much mothering as everything else — the planet and everything on it. I smile because beings of all kinds —whether human, duck, finch, cow, you name it — mother our world, and that is beautiful, and that really matters to me.

This is not all that really matters to me. Honestly, when my heart is open, everything that shows itself really matters.