crawling is hard

last spring i met a girl who should have been learning to run. instead she could barely sit herself up, gravity dragging her slight frame towards the earth...her bones bearing the weight of an unknowable amount of pain. she wanted to be held all the time...and to leave her in a crib was an unbearably pitiful undertaking. but we knew to cradle her constantly would aid the weakness in her who would welcome the death that hovered around her...so we urged her ever so gently to move, to reach, to crawl...the first time i actually forced myself to walk away from the tiny pleadings that would have come forth as wailing from a different mouth...something extraordinary happened. i was called in to see what my baby "had done". i expected a mess by a healthier toddler in the house but instead i found my new little love making her way up the three stairs into the hall that lead to my room...she had crawled almost 50 feet already.

and do you know what i did?

i clapped, and went for my camera, and danced and celebrated.
but she didn't want pictures or applause, she wanted me to pick her up.
she had made all this effort to beg for what she needed and i stood there and clapped and snapped digital pictures. what a fool i was. how rejected and humiliated she must have felt in those precious moments that i took to honor the moment for myself or at least in MY way instead of for her only. i will never forget what it felt like to pick her up and sit holding her on those stairs. i will never look at that photo without some bittersweetness that it exists. i will also never forget what it felt like later to get on the floor and crawl every day so that she would crawl with me.

let me just say there is a reason we learn how to walk.

crawling is hard.

not just that, it is limiting. it keeps us low and vulnerable. exposed and defenseless. it is awkward and humbling. crawling is hard. it is all these things that motivate us to conquer the precarious idea of balancing on two legs and moving freely about the planet. walking may be scary but it is a change of pace and persective that crawling teaches us to value immensely.

during an exercise in authentic movement for class i found myself on the floor crawling. i haven't done that since before rosetaina died in july. the flood of tears and ache that always seem to be poised like a wave about to crash do just that, pressing my face to the wooden floor. it was here that i first imagined what it would feel like if someone had chosen to mark this moment with a picture instead of an embrace. it was here i finally embraced not just the diligence but the humility and desperation of her efforts that day.

and here that i embraced that of my own efforts of late.

i have let life knock me down and i can't seem to get back up. all i can really do is crawl.

and crawling is hard.