Bob and I are grandparents to a little dragon – Orion Xialong. Orion for the constellation and mighty hunter. Xialong for a tiny dragon, the Chinese year into which he was born. To say he is everything is just a small piece of what we feel for this miracle.
We are keeping him in May while Miriam finishes teaching out the school year. His dad is out of town for 3 weeks. We are more than happy to help. We love him like they do. We are both retired. The pool is closed for renovation so I can’t swim anyway. Bob can schedule his meetings around feeding schedules and I can grade papers at night after he is picked up.
We raised 3 children. “We’ve done this before”, we said. We love this tiny baby with all our hearts…we’ve got this. And we do.
After 30 years though it is a bit different. The muscles, bones and energy levels are 30 years older now. The ‘breast milk in a bottle’, while working, is not what this tiny dragon prefers. We don’t smell like mom and dad. We don’t have the same aura. We sing different songs. We are familial and he knows that we love him. We are still not mom and dad. In short, we are absolutely and utterly exhausted at the end of every single day.
However, while we have this tiny dragon we are sending him everything that is inside of us to let him know that ALL of his bits and pieces, ALL of his soul and heart, ALL of his future dreams and desires, are welcome here. We wish courage and joy and steadfastness. We are here for the hard edges and soft spots. All of it. It’s all welcome.
~Lydia Patrick
Come One, Come All
Ian W. Riddell
Come one, come all!
Come with your missing pieces and your extra screws
Come with your hard edges and your soft spots
Come with your bowed heads and upright spines
Come all you flamboyant and drab
verbose and quiet fidgeting and lethargic
All you with large vision and tender hearts
All you with small courage and tender fears
Bring your lisp and your stutter and your song
Bring your gravel and your drawl and your lilt
Bring your anger and your joy and your righteous indignation
Misfits and conformists and everyone in between
Come into this space and be welcome
Bring who you are
Bring where you’ve traveled
Bring what you long for
and let us worship together
What a glorious way to wake up this morning! Thank you, Lydia, Bob, and the little dragon, as well as my colleague Ian!
Thank you for sharing this emotional and touching story and poetry.
Thank you for this. As my husband and I spend 9 weeks this summer helping our daughter care for her four little boys ages 11 and under (who are all loud, high-spirited, and funny) it is good to remember the sweet core of love-no-matter-what within our hearts for each dear soul. When they are all talking at once. When getting out the door to swim practice or baseball practice is a frantic race, when my knee is aching and my emotions are overwhelming and everything’s to do all at once. To just stop a moment, breathe a moment, smile now. Thank you.