I am sitting at the table in my bedroom (not the bedroom above, which one sister just passed down to another) with the windows thrown open to catch the Indian summer breeze we are getting more often now. It is not yet cool here in the foothills, but there are some hints that autumn is indeed creeping around the corner.
School is back in full swing. There are no longer any little people around the table. All my students can read fluently. They capably perform all four math operations. Instead of phonics we now go over latin verbs and bisect angles together. Although just a few years ago I had no clear vision for how this stage of home learning would look I can happily report it is rich and satisfying, like a daily retreat for Mom. Big kids and big ideas.
This morning finds me, mug in hand, waiting for the highschool football player who was up and out before dawn for his Thursday morning walk through at the stadium, as they do each week ahead of the JV and varsity games. Each week I say my silent prayers that the boys make it through another game without serious injury.
As the years roll by I am reminded that it is rarely those dangers you imagine that are most likely to strike, however. How many times I have told my children. Those fears that haunt you, the ones you dread and wonder over, they seldom come to pass. It is the completely unexpected that blindsides us and alters life in permanent ways.
The other evening I was sifting through the images of home here: dinners in progress, drops of rain falling off the oak leaves, children laughing in the backseat, the dog pulling on the leash. I wondered, is it appropriate it is to share the mundane when there are big decisions to be made, serious suffering around us? Does this appear superficial? Does it imply a disregard or disrespect for meatier issues? This morning I realized these images represent the strategy my grandmother modeled for tackling the big things. It is, in fact, the way I too move through my days now. Those little things are the stuff that keep us grounded in the now, keep us from losing our heads entirely, propel one foot in front of the other. They don't reveal the sum total of our experiences and trials. They do represent the very ways we navigate it all.
We arrange lilies in a vase, season the chops, walk the dog, read a few pages from the novel we are nursing. We notice the cream swirling in the cup, the way the light catches the tendrils of steam winding upwards. Then we take a deep breath and move forward, haltingly or with gusto, as the day may go.
Big kids, big ideas, big challenges, big life – maybe they all call for renewed appreciation of the little things that sustain us.
Starry Sky Journal 