Which story should I tell you about my day?

The one where the kids and I sat on a gigantic rock outcropping behind poet Carl Sandburg’s house in Flat Rock, NC and read his poems to one another while the mountains and the trees listened in?

Or the one where my kids acted so ridiculous at the dinner table that one of them spewed lemonade all over his sweet potato?

Should I tell you about how we visited a new to us apple orchard and loved the dwarf trees and the views and the staff there?

Or should I tell you how my youngest son cried genuine tears when I made him write a poem of his own on the picturesque rock from the first story?

Maybe I could tell you how we ate lunch at one of our favorite shops in Hendersonville as a treat and had some of the best crunchy fried chicken I’ve had.

Or about the kid who almost lost her cool because I only bought an apple slush to share instead of her own individual slush.

How about how we all worked together to cook a delicious dinner of quinoa cakes with homemade tzatziki sauce and fresh from Justus Orchards sweet potatoes and freshly whipped up honey cinnamon butter?

Or about the fall out from when I said Nintendo time was over?

Maybe the story about how my twelve year old left the shower, professing to have already both washed and dried his hair in under thirty-five seconds.

Perhaps how when I asked Otto what his highs and lows were for the day as I tucked him in and he said, “High – playing Nintendo (after ALL of our adventures today) and his low was “walking up the hill to Carl Sandburg’s house” and cleaning the kitchen.

Maybe there’s space to tell the story of how we bought the biggest cabbage I have ever seen – weighing in at over EIGHT pounds.  (I don’t think I even care for cabbage.)

Or of how as we walked the trail back to our car we all talked about heaven.  And how I hope that my house in heaven (if it all shakes down like that) will look pretty much just like Connemara (Mr. Sandburg’s home) and how Mosely plans to live in the woods and cuddle with tigers and bears.  And how Bergen is so connected to this answer that he gives out a rare high five to Mosely and how that feels a little like heaven right then to me as their mom.

I don’t know.  Maybe just glossing over all these stories is enough for one day and one read.  It’s a beautiful and terrible world, isn’t it? And in one day I think I saw the rise and fall of both, in my heart, on my kids’ faces, in their words, in our trip up and over the mountain and back again to our starting point.

I think maybe Bergen inadvertently summed it all up accurately – the lovely and the ugly that one day can hold.

I asked Bergen the same question I asked Otto.  And his response was, “High – walking up the hill to Carl Sandburg’s house and low – eating a sweet potato that I lemonaded on.”  (Yep.  He used “lemonaded” as a verb.  Homeschool!)

That’s it though, isn’t it?  On one day – from sun up to sun down – we get to walk up a beautiful hill and we have to eat lemonade sweet potatoes.

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