My kids are back in school. Actually, Beckey is at a leadership/team building experience at a Y-camp, but she's back this afternoon, and then, back to school. We managed to afford all the binders and calculators, new shoes, trip fees, and new bags, though the stew pot is thin this week. But now, well, it feels just a little TOO quiet! I know, I was complaining, it was too LOUD here just last week - my kids, their kids, neighbor kids, dogs, puppies (not ours!), parties, and the start of everything - it felt overwhelming. And now it's so darned quiet I have no excuses for not hearing the dang buzzer on the dryer in the basement. Well, some things may never change - like the piles of laundry all sorted out and ready for washing on the basement floor - but some things do. Beckey is in middle school, with lots of expectations and a whole new sense of belonging. Orin is on the bus and in kindergarten. He started writing a book yesterday, and drew two calender pictures - one of camels and the other he couldn't remember because then he drew a lot of other pictures, but they weren't calendar pictures, but he couldn't remember which were which. He's a rather happy boy! Soccer started last weekend, and he got stung twice by a wasp and fell once, on his tailbone, and it hurt. Not a great start to the season, but at practice on Monday he took some real tumbles w/out shedding a tear, ran his little heart out, and really enjoyed it! He was very charged up (making bedtime in time for book club impossible, but he was kind and sweet, and very cute in his matching purple footie pajamas - matching Beckey's of course!).
It's so quiet I can hear the lawn mower down the block. I can hear the wind in the oak tree outside, it's leaves still holding fast. I can hear the creaks of my own fingers on the keyboard, and in the house where it settles and sighs in the sun.
I will someday grow up and get a job and leave all this quiet behind, but for now, I am loving these moments, until the children return and in a flourish of kisses and lunch boxes, dirty socks and backpacks filled with the fruit of their day's labor, the quiet is gone, and my life is back. Sudden as it appeared, the quiet that became oppressive is once more elusive, and sacred.
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Wow....quiet. I will try that in a few weeks, for a short time a few days. Time to write, my friend. And walk. Funny about back to school stuff, I miss it in a way, in Sweden you can not require famiiles to buy anything for school, and lunch is always included (you can not send lunches to most schools!) as it would be unfair....between that an crayola not being sold here it feels a little less back to school-y, with out paints and crayons and backpacks filling out the sale fliers and displays. Anyway, enjoy that quiet. Happy almost Fall!
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