Family Night

I put a Family Night on our calendar for a recent Sunday.

I made a plan.

It’s what I do.

And here comes Sunday.

Late morning breakfast.

Steaming oatmeal, coffee for some.  Laughter.

A few rounds of Bananagrams.  Timeline.

No one seems to leave the table.

The sun rises higher in the sky.

We’re wearing pajamas or yesterday’s clothes.

The sound track to Fantastic Mr. Fox is playing.

The activities around the table shift and evolve, but no one exits.

Kevin teaches several enthusiastic learners how to play tabletop basketball.  (The kind where you use a quarter and your two hands in the shape of a goal.)

Piper is diligently writing the words cat bat to thirty-one times just because she can.

There are Legos and pencils and glasses of water and Christmas stocking bounty of dark chocolate covered almonds.

And Bergen Hawkeye says, “I want a Family Night like this.”

Kevin asks, “Like what?”

“Like this,” Bergen replies.  “Playing games.  Reading.  Drawing.  Being at the table together.”

It seems our Family Night found us in the middle of a morning.

A morning of Slow.

A morning of Pause.

A morning of Enough.

You can’t plan that.

(But you can leave space for it.)

What a perfectly lovely way to begin a week.