Awareness (and a garden update)

The word "awareness" bothers me. Most basically, it means that you know a thing exists, like having awareness that there may be traffic on the street, hopefully resulting in looking both ways. It's also developed a more nuanced meaning of being deliberately conscious of things like breast cancer and domestic violence and other social issues, though these calls for "awareness" mostly seem to stop with, "Hey! Thing exists!" (like those gimmicky bra color things on Facebook on Breast Cancer Awareness Day, which I loathe). I don't think anyone today isn't aware of the existence of cancer, or violence, or whatever. Calls for mere awareness seem grossly inadequate to the challenge.

So when the directions on a yoga website instructed me (paraphrasing because I don't remember exactly) "with every breath commit to greater awareness," I interpreted it as, "Blah blah blah buzzword blah." What am I supposed to be aware of? And why does it matter? But I tucked the idea that awareness is to be committed to someplace safe where it wouldn't get lost.

Today Glennon of Momastery posted on Facebook, "It's World Autism Awareness Day. To all the little ones with autism: we are not just aware of you, WE LOVE THE BLOODY HECK OUT OF YOU. We are not just aware of you, WE VALUE YOU and THE GIFTS that only YOU, JUST THE WAY YOU ARE, can offer our world."

Yes. Ok. Thank you. When someone tells me to be aware of Thing, I should read that instead as "LOVE THE BLOODY HECK OUT OF" everyone involved.

So I started thinking about the awareness that the skinny-stretchy-bendy yoga lady in the picture online told me to commit to. And I remembered gardening yesterday with Margaret. She was sent home from school on Tuesday with a low-grade fever, and being the responsible parent I am (forgetting that I'm the one who sent her to school when she obviously wasn't feeling like her usual self in the first place) I kept her home for a full 24 hours after her temperature was normal, which meant that on Wednesday, she was feeling fine and I wasn't going to let her spend all day watching Dinosaur Train.

We went outside and planted sunflowers, zucchinis, and a pumpkin.

They went here because no one wants to mow this area and the sooner it gets turned into a garden the better.

We checked on the little sprouts that I posted pictures of a few weeks ago. I'm thinking daffodils.

There were these little purple crocus things that seemed so fragile I couldn't imagine how they would ever survive in our yard, but here they were.

Also these. No idea what they are, but they're intriguing.

Later I took all the minions for an adventure in the field behind our house, sleeveless in the sunshine.

So. Awareness. Small things growing (both children and plants), sun on my back, birds singing (there's one that's been spending a suspicious amount of time in the neighbors' shrub--perhaps a nest?) and an intensely blue sky.

Every day I will commit to loving the heck out of it all. And believing that the heck is being loved out of me, too.