running, rising, soaring

Images are flitting through my head in flashes,

like lightning hitting the backs of clouds.


Picture this:

a hill, with ordinary houses dotting down and down the incline. All is quiet—
birds and children dozing.

Then

a rumble. Growing louder, louder, louder. Turning into a roar and you see

a driver-less semi-trailer barrelling down the road. Just like that. The houses blink, astonished and the birds are blown backwards in surprise.

And

right behind that truck, you see

a runner, coming down the hill. Fists and legs pumping, red-faced and barrelling too…so close, so close,

running

until he and that crazy truck are out of view.


Which is kind of how
our days are right now.


Today we went hard from 8.30 'til 7.30. No, we didn't go back in time! (Tho' wouldn't that have been fun?)

We left the house at 8.30 in the morning and returned at 7.30 at night. And the day was like a basket full of fireworks, an apron full of frogs, a day

of running to keep up.


But with such smiles on our faces!


Because it was a day made of

Lego League and brainstorming ideas and my boy and my girl and I showing our very first PowerPoint presentation (about an Invention that is way too Top Secret to share here, for now) and trying new, Lego-y things  and doing a team-building exercise that had children falling over laughing. And fresh-made muffins and tree climbing and children bent over tables with their heads together. Three hours together and we were all of us like photos spread on a table, our corners overlapping.

And then,

staying to have lunch after the meeting, talking with friends,
three kids still not sick of each other, playing and talking, talking and playing, outside.

And then,

going to Homeschool Group, to the playground by the beach. A beautiful combination :)

As we mothers talked there in the sun, warming ourselves like happy cats, we could see

the ocean lying in front and

a pulsing pack of kids playing all around. Playing so deep and so fine, calling to each other, following each other,

so all together we formed the great Us.

We of the Homeschool Wild.


And then,

we went off to the shops to buy pants.

Huh. There's nothing poetic about that!


But wait—it gets more interesting.

Why the pants, I hear you ask?

Because a boy who busked on Saturday got offered a paying gig with his band!

And they were playing tonight.

So off we went and tried for cheap pants, but the cheap pants shops shouted, "It's Spring now; Pants are out! Shorts are in! You snooze, you lose! Suckas!"

So the fancy pants shop was our only, and Last, Resort. And such fine fancy pants we found. (On sale, no less. 30% off. Doesn't get much better than that). My boy looked Slick.

Which meant that
while my girl

did art class,

my boy played in his new fancy pants, with his four friends at an opening for a barbershop/retro cafe.

My girl carefully, intently dabbed colours onto paper, deep in her element,

and

my boy lay into a groove that made the air shiver.


How did I know this? Because I got to see both. Watched my girl paint, then we joined my son and husband at the gig.

Cup runneth over. 

We are so lucky.

We carry art on our backs, in our hearts; we wrap ourselves up in it. It keeps us warm in winter, cool in summer. It makes us rise off the ground as though we have little people firing us up inside, so we take off over the treetops. We soar.


Which means, a day that could have

wiped me out,

fed me instead.


After all, you don't know for sure that the runner won't catch that crazy runaway truck. When the hill flattens out and the truck loses steam… There our runner is, slower now, but calm. Looking around, a little, a lot. Knowing that

it's not the catching, but the running (or walking, strolling, skipping),

the keeping going,

and the living

meanwhile,

that matters.



Don't you think? :)

credit