didaink

Meet my muse (formerly known as "Mariah")

The wind... I'm watching it. Its power, humbling. Its voice strong and bold, it begins to chime. I decide to take notes on what I see and hear as part of my writing practice, a ritual I’ve recently begun before I begin to chip away again at the chapters in my book. What starts out as a ten-minute exercise on writing with presence-of-mind quickly turns into a sixty-minute lesson on resilience.

And today she is my muse. She makes no excuses. She doesn’t wait. She simply moves ahead and picks a direction. There are leaves and branches and twigs pressing against her and, yet, she stays straight. Three crows and a large black V of geese fly in the opposite direction and she pays no attention, she’s on her own journey. The clouds cling to her and sail along across the blue, attaching to her back like a papoose. At times she is fierce and relentless, a mother in control of her flock, her voice, the loudest sound in the sky. If you get in her way she will push back against you and not let you pass without a fight. She’s come too far, traveled too long to be stopped now just because she’s had a little trouble along the way.

And then there are the moments when she is calm, when she lets the clouds have a rest. I see her gently push the wind chimes back and forth like a baby giggling in his swing, and I wait for her to fully stop. She pretends to, almost intentionally trying to fool me into thinking her journey is over, she’s going to take a break, hang up her hat. Then a swirl of leaves dance a circle around my feet and off she goes again, full speed ahead, to finish what she started -- her next chapter, about to begin.

 

Finding everything in the art of doing nothing

Today I cancelled everything on my list and delighted in doing almost nothing at all. Alongside my daughter, though, I accomplished all the things that weren't on my list -- the things I hadn't anticipated, the things I forgot and neglected. A Friday spent snuggled up on the couch with my little girl leaning on me under baby soft blankets gave me back the perspective that I lost during the busy, itemized week. 

It took an unforeseen fever, a sore throat, and a missed day of school, but it is a day that I’ll look back on in ten years and miss the living daylights out of -- my daughter and me shuffling around in matching slippers and dirty hair, but cozy and warm in our clean pajamas. 

We wrote and made a donation to our favorite charity and watched the sky flurry. Then, when the sun warmed it up with big patches of blue, we decided on macaroni and cheese for lunch and watched all of our favorite home improvement shows, our bowls balanced and steady in our laps, commenting on curbs that appealed to us. Yet, I felt no need to improve my own "curb" or house today. I cleaned nothing, and the kitchen counter is littered with medicine bottles and dishes, the trash is over-flowing, and the boxes lined up in my office and bedroom still sit alone and cold, awaiting my attention after almost five months in our new house. They can wait some more. My daughter’s temperature is down and she is smiling again. The house and my life is perfect as is today, my to-do list still chuck full of “do's” and not one “done.”

What I did today cannot be quantified with a check mark, but I suspect in ten years it will be all that really mattered. I'll watch my daughter pack up her own boxes soon enough while she makes, then crosses off, her own to-do list in the world. And when I help her unpack those boxes in her first apartment, I'll think back on quality days like this one, mastering the art of doing nothing while accomplishing everything I was supposed to do.

The sun is sliding down the sky and the light is fading, the television still on. My son is back from school and they are cuddled up under the blankets now watching cartoons, his big sister still sneezing and blowing her nose. The cat and dog have joined them, and there's hardly any room for me. I tell them all to scoot over, I want my sweet spot back.

Kleenex tissues and slippers, popcorn kernels and Legos scatter the floor, but I resist and tell myself, don't get up, just sit and let it be. It can all wait. The cleaning lady comes tomorrow... besides, she’s never seen this episode.