words, not drawings.

These warm January days have been a gift.

Sitting on our porch last week the kids and I were supposed to be working on our Nature Study drawings. The kids colored and drew steadily.

But I didn’t draw that afternoon.

Instead, I picked words over drawings.

……

Blue, blue, so bright it burns.

Mistletoe,

woodpeckers

and the sound of the mourning dove.

“It mimics an owl,” London explains.

And already she knows more than me.

A kind of success, I think.

We sit at the abandoned red table on the porch’s sunny side

and even though it’s January,

it’s warm

and beautiful.

And so so bright bright it almost burns.

I start planning to hang breezy curtains on this side come summer.

I love the sound of pencil strokes

and the four-year-old continual cacophony of chaos.

Humming. Sing-singing. Words and non-words. Repeated endlessly in some sort of looping rhythm.

Today, this is school.

This is education.

And it’s as pleasing as the warm weather.

As surprising as a sunny day after a weekend of grey and wet and heavy.

It’s rocks gathered on a hike

and a two-year-old holding his sister’s hand.

It’s a novel read out loud on the porch

and a brother offering praise for his sister’s artwork.

Songs made up and sung and forgotten as quickly as the noise filled the silence.

The light breeze is like hope

and it floats across our faces

and fills our lungs

and makes the lows seem less

and the tomorrows a gift.

And if there was a way to pocket this moment,

to package it and share it,

to contain it and store it,

that would be my job right this instant.

But we know the tape and the box

and the thought and the wish are all

impossible.

Which must remain true.

And somehow that truth only makes everything

shine brighter

seem warmer

and me sigh more deeply.

It is today.

It is only a moment.

An afternoon.

But

it is

everything.