4 hours ago
Showing posts with label 8-Minute Memoir. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 8-Minute Memoir. Show all posts
Outside, my little brown-haired boy, dirty shirt and bare feet, is spinning furiously on a tire swing hanging from a pine tree. A curly-haired girl laughs and her hair shines as she spins him faster.
Farther down the hill, the boy who made me a mom is jumping on the trampoline with my last baby, who doesn't look like a baby anymore. The trampoline squeaks, and he gets a mischievous look on his face while she shrieks in delight as she is bounced high into the air.
The leaves on the wax current bushes are still green, but that indescribable green that occurs when there is gold shimmering underneath. Our old hound lays on the porch, his head resting on his paws, his sides moving in and out evenly as he naps in the sunshine.
A puff of air ruffles my hair, and my husband comes to the kitchen for a midday snack before heading back upstairs to work. Sounds of the piano come from the other room as my oldest daughter plays a couple keys; and then she mutters to herself as she puzzles out the notes on her sheet music. A cheerful Christmas song fills my house as she tries again, and I realize that the season of our Savior's birth will be here before I know it.
But for now, I sit here, listening to the hummingbirds whirring outside, the shouts and joy drifting in on the breeze, the single notes being plunked in the background. The porch glistens where it's still wet from the rain, but the sun is shining, and the blue sky is taking over the storm clouds. I'm surrounded by all the most beautiful sounds in the world, the sounds of my imaginings come true.
I think now about how years ago, when I pictured my future family and home, I couldn't have dreamed up anything better.
In this moment, on this last day at home before our summer is over, I am wonderfully happy and thankful.
It’s an unseasonably warm day. The sun is diffusing softly through the curtains, and the house is almost quiet. My tiniest child is sleeping upstairs, and I hear muffled shouts as I carry my book into the sitting room. I brush the gauzy curtain aside and see my gaggle of children, coats unbuttoned and flapping as they race on their bikes.
A sniffly noise emits from our hound dog, snoozing in the corner, his head resting between his two front paws and eyes closed. I sit and read a while, listening to nothing but the sounds that always fill a “quiet” house. The heater clicking on. A sink dripping somewhere. A slight breeze creaking the screen door. A small cry from my baby upstairs, before she settles and this noisy silence fills the air again. A conversation outside, in young voices I can’t decipher. A page of my book turning.
I look out the window and I can see the rain blowing up over the mountains, and the wind is picking up. My kid-gang tumbles through the door with bright eyes and red, runny noses. My middle boy asks for a snack with big eyes and a sniff. They tell me it’s getting cold, and they are inside now, and the house is quiet again, but not silent. A cartoon plays softly from the next room, and they occasionally converse with their fictional screen-friends or burst out into laughter.
Sometimes I want peace and quiet as a mom, and I got a little bit of the peace part this afternoon. The quiet part is ever debatable. A house with five kids is never actually silent.
But then, even when the house is so full of noise that I’m overwhelmed, I know in my heart that silence isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. How very grateful I am to be here, in a house that’s never truly quiet, where shouts of joy, and small sorrows, squabbles and giggles - all this life spills out and vibrates the air molecules straight into my ears almost every moment of the day.
(Quick note - Post inspired by Amanda's beautiful 12-Minute memoir yesterday. I forgot how much I like doing these, and it's so much easier to fit in before the kids wake up. I'm getting my prompts here. Thanks Amanda! Also, picture is from somewhere else where they actually have those magical flowering trees.)
6:46 AM
When I think of spring I think of one thing: mud.
I've lived in the mountains my whole life, and in the mountains spring is an endless cycle of snow which turns to mud, which is covered by more snow. Even the springs that break form (like this one) are brown and grey in the mountains, with very little color. We wait and wait, until suddenly, all in a flurry at the end of May, it goes from spring to summer in one week.
When I was a child I never understood why people liked spring. When I became a young adult I started to realize that other places had flowers, flowering trees even. And well, if you have a spring like that, it makes sense why you would like it. But in my mountain world, spring is the ugliest season.
Mountain springs haven't changed that much since I was a kid, but while I used to hate the season, I don't anymore. It's still brown and yucky, but I notice the green grass poking through the ground, hidden behind the yellowed leftovers from last year. As my kids' feet pound the floor above me way too early in the morning, I realize I also hear birds singing an endless song outside the window. I walk over to let our big hound mix outside, because he won't leave me alone until I do, and I hear squirrels chattering and I breathe in the cold, wet smell of melting snow.
Spring will always smell like that to me. Not like flowers, or green grass. Like mud and melting snow.
There is life out there, new life stretching up, peeking around the corner, sitting in the tree branches. I never noticed that as a kid, but I do now. Now that I've felt new life in my womb, held it in my arms, and had a few more Resurrection Days under my belt, spring holds a bit more significance.
So even these muddy, ugly springs are beautiful after all. I look out my window and can see the echoes of God's words in Genesis - even here, in the mud.
"It is good."
6:54 AM
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