Right now I'm sitting at my kitchen table. I have a quasi-cold cup of coffee and ten pages about Emily Dickinson that need editing. The to-do list got so long this week that I stopped adding to it and I've been capitalizing on the newly-engaged status to win neck-rubs for stress knots. Seems like a bad moment to get back to blogging right? Or not.
I'm sitting facing the door of the Cran. In the backyard behind me the sun is setting--which in Kansas means its beautiful and pink and wintery. There is a little girl in a pink and purple coat running around the backyard and with her is her overgrown, quasi-awkward father. They have sticks. Her stick is short and proportional to her body. His is longer. They go to fight dueling sword style but she gets frustrated and makes him break his stick so that their respective weapons will be equal. The moment that he goes to fight with her she squeals and runs away. Now they run over the yard laughing and yelling and I find myself giggling because I remember doing this with my dad. In this moment as I'm giggling I have just an instant of crystallizing awareness: life can be so stressful and given enough stress I start to have tunnel vision--all I focus on is the to-do's and making sure I'm not forgetting or offending or slap-dashing. I don't know about you, but if I do this for very long, I stop having fun and everything in life starts to become one giant to-do list to be crossed off.
But wait a minute. Right now, literally in front of me, a little girl is squealing and giggling over a stick and her father's love. No trappings, no trimmings, just straight joy over relationships. That's pretty nice to remember.
