Happiness, Heaven-on-earth and Love

This poem was written with young parents in mind but

has something in it for us oldies too😉😄

(yes, it's muddy boots and wet-everything season!)

(because I do childcare some 'memories' stay quite fresh😅)

"Me? Trouble?!! 

How can you even think it?!"

It doesn’t always look like much; the noisy thick of it

Can spill and spread in such a way to make you ‘sick’ of it

Yes, you confess the mess is often quite more-than-enough

It doesn’t look like happiness, heaven-on-earth or love

You slip on the spaghetti that your darling toddler flung

Next week you’ll find one dried to the ceiling or a chair wrung

The toy-box you replenished at Christmas with eager joy

Is like a decoration ignored by dear girl and boy

Between lost socks-boots-mittens, you find scribbles on the wall

Where budding artists practiced while you answered a phone call

First signs of spring are tracked across the fresh-mopped kitchen floor

‘Enjoy these Best of Days’ says ‘Mrs. Old’ who lives next door

The sink is full of dishes while fridge and cupboard run bare

Baby is teething so you do not have patience a hand to spare

You sure could use the nap your youngster refuses to take

It would work such sweet wonders for your arms, back and headache

The bills are due, there are a few you had not counted on

Thank God for work and by His grace you’ll keep chugging along

…where Something steals your breath as only Little Tot can do

And you forget all but the precious face looking at you

Yes, it can feel like quite a fight, the messy ‘stick’ of it

Keeps you from understanding quite, the tender quick of it

But some day you’ll look back and see (like we did) sure enough

That this really is/was happiness, heaven-on-earth and love

(Optional ending)

(…the point to this ditty I guess is, whether young or old

In the middle of muddle-cuddle-mess-blessed hug-and-hold

Or past the place of youth and grace as we embrace ‘what’s next’

And wonder at the mirror-face, half-laughing and half-vexed

…we ought to try to take and make the best of where we are

Nobody needs to be perfecto or a super-star

But learn to count the beauties and the blessings one by one

Because no matter where we are, where we are is soon gone!)

© Janet Martin