Category: Uncategorized (Page 7 of 187)

Just in case anyone out there has lost track of time, I want to remind you that we’re on the homestretch of summer. Not that I’m excited or anything.

(Clock courtesy of Counting Down To)

Because, why would I be thrilled that school will be in session? What would want to make me trade in our long summer days of children making constant messes with all 3,652 toys we own and the 5 things that their parents have asked them not to play with? Sure, I slightly detest the Lunchbox Rush at 7:14 am. Yet it seems my children eat 562 times more food while not in the school building.

Because I want this to be a happy post, I’m not going to mention the constant costume changes and the mounds for laundry. I gave up on beach towels a month ago. I’m counting on the chlorine to disinfect while it dries in the sun before I fold them up and return them to the closet.

Also, please sit with me in my grief. My dishwasher broke. THREE WEEKS AGO. Lowe’s promised me a new one but now they’re not answering their phone, like a soon-to-be ex-boyfriend.

It’s not that I’m excited to have summer over (okay, maybe I am a little) nor am I ungrateful for the summer life we create. I recognize that having all of my people under my roof during the brightest days of the year has many benefits.  I have help. Also, I’m not scrounging for childcare. I recognize many working parents come to the point when children outgrow early childhood daycare but yet aren’t quite ready to roam the streets stay home alone. So in all my crabbyness, please also hear me say out loud: I’m lucky – privileged – and I know it. I also know that I won’t be “helping” to pick up my basement again until those little messmakers are under the care and responsibility of trained professionals.

So maybe, just maybe, when the school supply list arrived, I immediately hopped online to fill my virtual cart with crayolas. Note: Target will only let you have 30 items in your cart. Note: the approximate size of cart filled only with items for 2 children to go back to school is 31 items.  (As a born and bred nerd, the school supply aisle is my absolute favorite, so it pains me to forego the in-person trip. I’m actually plotting to spend the first day of school among the paper and pens, alone. Heaven.)

Did I mention that the baby (of the 3-year-old variant) will also be spending some time with a teacher this year? Yes, my friends. I’m going to get (up to) a solid 5 hours per week with no one declaring they don’t like the song on the radio, lamenting that his banana broke while peeling it, or insisting that I watch how they can touch their toes to their ears while I try to pee in peace. Most real adults get these peaceful hours just on their commute to work, but I’ll gladly pay a local church to give me such freedoms.

So, while I will soak up the final days of afternoon swims and baseball fights games in the yard, I will endure as I do with all things: with a deep sense of hope. The season of crisp, clean notebook pages and sharpened crayons are upon us. The rhythm and regularity of an actual schedule will soon guide us.

Teacher friends, I hand the torch to you. Godspeed.

Every morning, I rise and prepare the coffee grinds. I sit in the same brown leather chair with my steamy mug and I awaken to the day. To my right is our front window, facing the west. This morning it was dark and gray, fooling me into believing that nothing but rainstorms lie ahead.

To my left, I look out our eastern-side sliding doors. This morning’s sunrise painted the undersides of the clouds in varying shades of pinks and oranges. The light was so bright when it reflected into the house, I needed to shift my gaze.

Find a seat to look out both windows. Notice the space where the sunrise has not yet reached. At the same time, adore the beauty of light edging out darkness.  Because this is life; your life and my life. Through both windows you can acknowledge both darkness and there is dawn. Both. And.

From here, I can see the work of the sun twice a day.

I read/heard recently that most poets are also prophets; most prophets spoke in poetic prose.  Amen.

From Work Song, in New Collected Poems by Wendell Berry.

2. A Vision

If we will have the wisdom to survive,
to stand like slow-growing trees,
on a ruined place, renewing, enriching it,
if we will make our seasons welcome here,
asking not too much of earth or heaven,
then a long time after we are dead
the lives our lives prepare will live
here, their houses strongly placed
upon the valley sides, fields and gardens
rich in the windows. The river will run
clear, as we will never know it,
and over it, birdsong like a canopy.
On the levels of the hills will be
green meadows, stock bells in noon shade.
On the steeps where greed and ignorance cut down
the old forest, an old forest will stand,
its rich leaf-fall drifting on its roots.
The veins of forgotton springs will have opened.
Families will be singing in the fields.
In their voices they will hear a music
risen out of the ground. They will take
nothing from the ground they will not return,
whatever the grief at parting. Memory,
native to this valley, will spread over it
like a grove, and memory will grow
into legand, legand into song, song
into sacrament. The abundance of this place,
the songs of its people and its birds,
will be health and wisdom and indwelling
light. This is no paradisal dream.
Its hardship is its possibility.