on having children

I currently re-read Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom. If you have not read it, go and find one. It's a good book about life's greatest lesson. Anyway, I stumbled upon this today:

"Whenever people ask me about having children or not having children, I never tell them what to do," Morrie said now, looking at a photo of his oldest son. "I simply say, 'There is no experience like having children.' That's all. There is no substitute for it. You cannot do it with a friend. You cannot do it with a lover. If you want the experience of having complete responsibility for another human being, and to learn how to love and bond in the deepest way, then you should have children."

From chapter: The Fifth Tuesday - We Talk About Family

The first time I read this book was long ago in my university days, I was not a parent yet. Now that I am one, I am touched in a new way by this chapter on family.

Being parent is indeed a special experience. Morrie put it fittingly in those lines.

on children

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

- From The Prophet by Khalil Gibran

learning from a child

It's about three thirty in the afternoon. I brought Jove out to play on the grass in front of the house. We spent a considerably long time examining the rough texture of the grass (a little bit dry because of the hot afternoon sun, I supposed) and the warmth of the stone slabs.

I followed Jove's lead on what to do. We walked on the ticklish grass barefooted, we hopped from stone to stone, we sat down and pulled out some weeds that grew among the grasses, Jove pulled some grasses. The sky was blue, some birds flew above us. The soft breeze caressed our hair lovingly. I could be laying down in a field of green grass with colorful wild flowers and feel as happy as I was this afternoon.

One secret of happiness that I learned from Jovan is as simple as living every second of your day to the fullest. Well, I don't feel happy all the time and I may not remember this secret at all times, but for half an hour this afternoon, I was truly happy.

I did have some thoughts on what the neighbors would say looking at a mother and her son looking intently at grasses and stones while smiling cheerfully at each other. Err, well, that's another secret of happiness that the children possessed: do not care about what other people will think of you. Just enjoy what you do (and what you have) at the moment and be happy. That works for me this afternoon.

so it has been two years

With Jove around, time flies faster. I did not realize it has been two years since we got married.

The first year was a very bumpy ride with lots of uncertainty coupled with anxiety of having a baby. We knew someone else has joined us in the journey on the twenty second day of our marriage. Big surprise indeed! Thus, we had a three-month old Jovan on the day of our first anniversary.

The second year was not that bumpy and we had lots of fun watching Jovan grew (and playing with him too). God has blessed us with so many things that we did not even think we deserved. We secured our first brick and mortar home today. It's a divine intervention that the date of the certificate fell on the same day as our second anniversary. A best friend of mine always reminded me of this verse whenever I felt insecure for the future: God makes all things beautiful in His time.

Indeed He does.