Bubble bath babe

Rising like a nymph from the foam
she hurled a handful of white bubbles in the air,
her hair in tendrils
clinging around her glowing cherubic face.

“Please play with me,” she pleaded,
piling delicate bubbles on her head.
“Look! All the rainbows in the world are here.
I see purple and red and yellow.
How does that happen?
What’s inside the bubbles?

Now I’ll make a castle.
Or I can be a unicorn
if I put it all in a heap on my head.
Watch me and I’ll make it snow.”

She cupped her hands
scooped up bubbles and blew them in the air,
showering the walls
and laughing as the bubbles popped in her face

The cherub rolled around in the froth
until it covered all of her.
“Now I’m a snowman.

Can I get out now, Grandma?
I’m cold.”

“My patience, resolutions and beliefs are tested to the limits – sometimes daily.”^*

Right at this moment one of my challenges is the constant, tuneless whistling from my elder son. When my boys were babies it was getting them to sleep or trying to figure out why they were crying. On any given day now, it might be squabbling, fighting, teasing, screaming, shouting or rudeness. Who’d be a parent? We might well question ourselves after the event, but we can’t very well put them back! Just how we find those inner resources, how we constantly demand more of ourselves, how we keep marching up that hill with a smile on our face and gladness in our heart at the sight of our ‘babies’ is one of life’s mysteries.

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