There is a wire sculpture that looks like a giraffe. That is when it is not a dead ringer for an elephant. Depending on where you stand, the image shifts. Another one looks like a disheveled mess, unless you step to the side in which case it looks like Ferdinand Cheval.

 

God pulls a similar switch on me. Regularly.

 

Before I was married I taught third grade near Chicago. John was in his last year of theological school in Pennsylvania, and we wrote letters several times a week. I reread some of them ten years later when I was friends with a woman who was in her first year of teaching. I felt disgruntled that our relationship was relegated to the bottom rung of her priorities. In one of the letters, penned by my own hand, was a paragraph that shifted my perspective. 

 

"Teaching is so much work! I barely have time for anything else. I hope I remember this one day when someone else is too busy for me."

 

Another arena in which I have changed my stance is babysitting. At one point I was the babysitter. I recall sitting outside the door where sleeping children lay, the only sound being the tick of the clock. I won't bore you with how low the wages were, but suffice it to say it did not expand my wardrobe. Years later I hired sitters for my own brood. After my kids were especially rowdy it took multiple calls to get a yes. John and I read cartoons about Roslyn, Calvin, and Hobbes for therapy. Later the job of keeping kids fell to my daughters. Having perched in three thirds of the sitter/sittee/parent triad, my capacity for compassion has widened. Each person has their story. 

 

For most of my parenting career we lived three thousand miles away from grandparents. I felt sorry for myself that my kids did not spend time at grandma's and when we finally moved east I was eager to make up for lost time. But neither set of grandparents offered much. My mom had a stash of chocolate covered raisins, and John's hosted Thanksgiving. But there were no regular Friday night pizza parties or trips to the zoo. I was disappointed. 

 

But now that I am brushing up against retirement, the notion of being a hands on grandmother sounds exhausting. Looking back and doing the math I realized with some chagrin that my mother was a sweet seventy five when she moved in with us. I did not yet understand how that felt. But I am starting to. 

 

It can be eye opening to see things from a fresh vantage point. I wonder what blindness still lurks in my corner.