Skip to main content

Spark

Usually when I am in charge of picking up my daughter from school on Friday afternoons, I hustle her out of there sharpish. A few Fridays ago though, although it was foggy and grey, you could feel spring seeping out of the earth.  All the kids were running around with wide open jackets. There is a big hill behind the school and the kids were racing each other up and down it. I was in the mood to let her fully take advantage of this warm spell and not rush her away. After a while, my daughter gravitated down to the foot of the hill to where a gnarled old tree sits.  She tentatively made her way around the tree, slowly but surely issuing suggestions/commands to her younger brother.  They weren't playing a specific game, just warming up.  For whatever reason, I, for once, was not impatiently drumming my fingers but rather possessed by a brief but intense ability to just be there.  


Simultaneously, a boy from her class circled the tree and watched on in interest as my daughter's play started to take shape.  Initially, he observed and then he briefly swung from the tree.  Finally, he announced that he would join her play by telling her that he would make a fire. My daughter glowed as she accepted the gift of recognition that her play warranted building upon.  The spark was lit. In return, she told him she would go catch some fish.  The world of their making came alive and they diligently went about filling in the details.  I watched with admiration.  The period of time between when the whole game got started and when his mom called for him was a matter of no more than 30 minutes. Their tacit agreement, signified by the picking up of a stick off the ground, kept the tinder lit for whatever time they had.

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I entered August without you.

 I won't visit you this month.  You won't call. I will raid your garden and you won't get any of the vegetables. I will make plans without telling you about them. We'll go to the store and not buy you one single thing. Whole books will be read and I will not tell you which ones. I will watch movies and not inform you. The nasturiums will ripen. Last month was different. I changed my schedule and took time off work to be with you.   I dropped all kinds of plans for us to be together. You sent me messages, I received them. I picked up food that I thought you would like at the store and sent you pictures of every beautiful thing I saw. I sang with you. We watched the Great Canadian Baking Show. You chose the recipe for the garlic scape pesto and gave me instructions for making the gooseberry jam. I am in August without you. You are in July.
1 comment
Read more

Fists full of lettuce

 It is a pot of a variety of lettuce plants. It was planted by my mom.  She has been living with Stage 4 bile duct cancer for at least 1.5 years (that we know of, probably a lot longer).  Standing and gardening are becoming harder as time goes on. She learned about gardening from her dad as a kid and kept on gardening every year of her adult life.  Sometimes the gardens were tiny or rudimentary, but with the help of my dad , they have become major and, at times elaborate, growing projects over the years.  Now it is a collection of raised beds and regular beds that hold a host of plants, vegetable and flowers. Something that was clear that first spring with Stage 4 cancer is that gardening would continue in a big way, cancer or no cancer.  It was important to order the seeds and start them inside and get them planted outside, no matter what. Spending time together in the summer with cancer now consistently involves gardening and following instructions. Plant...
Post a Comment
Read more

Keep telling yourself that.

We talk to ourselves everyday, all day (and night) for the whole of our lives. We started talking to ourselves before we knew we were a self, we forget what we said because we forget everything from before...when we were too young and busy developing our brain to remember those early years. There is still lingering residue of long forgotten conversations I have had with myself as a toddler sitting around in the crevices...sloughing off occasionally into words I tell myself still.   We talk non-stop, and not just with dialogue.  Our goosebumps communicate to us, our tingly feelings, our neurons, our peripheal vision.  They are all submitting data into our self and expecting us to react, respond or all to often, expecting what they are sending us will be ignored. After all that talking, you'd think we'd know what we think about most things, but occasionally we are stumped.  Unless we stop what we are doing and really concentrate sometimes that voice(s) ...
1 comment
Read more