One Wild and Precious Life

This is my son, Luke.  He is 31 months old and he loves to help in the kitchen armored in his trusty Baby Bjorn bib (my favorite bib in the world, in case there are any moms out there tired of damp limp baby bibs hanging around your kitchen, refusing to dry before the next meal).  Here he is helping me with some blue frosting for a going-away cake we baked for a friend.  As we got further into the baking project, things got a little wild, and I thought, "What am I doing baking with a 2 year old?"  Obviously, I could have completed the task much faster, and with less clean-up, had I turned on Wonder Pets (Luke's current favorite cartoon) and frosted the cake myself.  I didn't see the significance or the "preciousness" of this moment until I saw this photo filling my whole computer screen...that combined with stumbling across this poem by Mary Oliver this week.  The last stanza just rings in my heart.

The Summer Day

Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?