mindful distraction
August 25, 2016 § 3 Comments
This summer has been a season of intentional distraction and meditative mindfulness. Choosing to move against the grain of familiar comforts for purposeful discovery and greater connectivity as a family.
I let the laundry gather, the beds rest unmade, meal times draw later. I set aside my laptop and pen for my camera, loosing myself in a different lens.
We wandered further from our new home, long hikes and touristy distractions. There were no extravagant vacations, no elaborate wish lists or daily demands. Only a promise of presence in togetherness.
Our children looked past landmarks to discover love letters carved in old wooden bridges and beautiful stones along unfamiliar paths. We mapped our days by destination, loosing track of time as we sought magic with each small adventure.
As the school year demands we readjust our leisure for a more regimented practice of individual endeavors, I’ve been working to recognize opportunities for continued consciousness. Making new plans to reserve time for a greater practice of discovery and celebration for small moments. Together.
A gentler appreciation and more purposeful joy.
to market
June 24, 2016 § 4 Comments
Maybe it was the predictable pattern of beach days or the sudden breeze that pulled at loose ends and shuffled my sense of order, but yesterday found me gathering the kids into a different direction as we headed to our local farmers market.
Crowded sidewalks with broken lines and overlapping conversations trailed behind us like small children with sticky fingers. Fresh produce and artisan baked goods bookending handmade gifts and overpriced lemonade. We ate curled into shade to avoid hot park benches and window shopped air conditioned offerings.
Colors like street performers created a riot of music that drew the eye pushing us through currents of congested shoppers. We sampled and explored until our bellies were full and the sun slanted against our backs, each child lost to an unexpected treasure and eager for silence.
disappearing acts
June 22, 2016 § 2 Comments
It has been thirteen days since we first disappeared beneath the sun. If I am absent among my words, I am more present in the minutes given to conscious distraction.
Weekend meals with old friends stick to weekdays stretched across an almost empty beach. I have fallen in and out of new books and squandered an afternoon among dreams.
Time feels both endless and fleeting as days blur and minutes unwind in extravagant simplicities. Watermelon cubed and chilled pasta salad, white bread that presses pleasantly in hurried bites; sunset dinners and afternoon ice cream cones.
My tidy list of summer promises and curiosities sits forgotten beneath open faced books and notes that loop around fragmented wonderings. Calendar dates like photographs not yet developed.
one day
June 9, 2016 § 3 Comments
I spotted the beach last weekend and wondered if both children might discover a new sense of familiarity this first summer away from old routines. Each season since our move brings memories that awaken a disoriented contentment, a loneliness for something uncertain or a guilty exuberance over an intangible certainty. Home is a memory of something simultaneously old and still unknown.
I wanted only an hour of their time, without guarantee they might one day return. It was all I asked for – time enough to explore a new idea for possibility over permanence.
I suggested both children consider the unfamiliar beach an experiment and reinforced my encouragements by traveling light. Faded towels and hastily filled water bottles, sunscreen and a last minute football. No books that might stretch on through shifting sun patterns or sketchbooks that would demand extra care. No elaborate sand tools or snacks. I left the unused, inexpensive inflatable rings buried in my bag as a leftover intention from another day.
A gesture of optimism or guilty bribe.
The beach was quietly busy with comfortable stretches of space between clusters of children; room enough to bury our feet long past the edges of our towels without our conversations reaching our neighbors. Toddlers wielded clumsy shovels against misshapen castles and teenagers waded past the reach of adult reminders.
My children settled into a solitary excavation of distracted amusement. Hours fell comfortably like the sand that dried against our skin and I held my thoughts while stealing photographs of their uninhibited joy least they change their minds and ask that we return home.
In the end we stayed until the temperature threatened good sense, both children bartering our leave with promises to return. One day for another and more to come after. A new pattern emerging in the sand.
good & bored
June 6, 2016 § 3 Comments
Summer vacation has officially begun, but my calendar is long forgotten. Impromptu evenings with old friends and spontaneous indulgences bookend long days of sunshine squandered in a restless independence. These hours of curious emptiness are a season of their own.
Gone are the lost years of infant naps and toddler busyness, extravagant vacations or overly choreographed afternoons; it is a time of work and rest as we complete tasks and slip guiltlessly into distraction. This first week we labored, collectively, over enclosing our yard then slipped quietly into gentler distractions.
Both children have begun resting later into the morning and playing at old interests; exploring new spaces and toying with creative endeavors. In their contentment my husband and I have had time enough to linger, together, between the bustle of booths at a farmers market, but also to delight in stolen moments of easy confidence with each child, separately.
I am planning less, moving beneath the sun in search of active stillness and cool pockets of shade. It is a time of searching without ambition and delighting in uncommonly beautiful discoveries. A season that invites boredom for the magic of exploration.
seasons
May 25, 2016 § 8 Comments
This stretch of time between school and summer, days that feel like weeks for the weight of backpacks burdened with distracted longing for sleepy mornings and frivolous afternoons; it is a season to itself.
Even in our new home, where the expectations are uncertain for the unfamiliar terrain of potential distractions, the days feel like an echo of seasons past; the shape of our resistance to routine a performance of muscle memory.
Just two more sleeps, three full school days. One band lesson and three final exams. We can count our anticipation in endless combinations of responsibilities.
The next few days are predetermined, a tidy accounting of borrowed books and final assignments; classroom celebrations and yearbook exchanges. It is the days to come that pull our attention toward something else.
Unclaimed minutes to wander new sidewalks and explore new trails. Ice cream flavors to temper warm days and stargazing on cloudless evenings. Friendships that form poolside and sleepy afternoons lost to pages of a new book.
It is something more still, it is an ageless season of common ground. A time to remember our youth even as we savor the experience of our children’s childhood. Remember whens wrapped around new memories as they unfold.
another me
April 26, 2016 § 6 Comments
I remember the sky seemed to shed her last rays of light just as you lumbered into focus; your silhouette on fire, you plucked me from the shadows of the evening’s heat with curious amusement.
It was an hour of adolescence when time seemed a fabrication of authority and rules were something you leaned against for weight.
We were ghosts of something wanton chasing after stolen moments of spent youth. There was no afterthought in our distraction, only the urgency of fleeting freedom.
You chose me and I marveled at my good fortune. Moving recklessly against whim I let your contentment fill the vacancy of my certainty as I quickly disappeared into an extension of your pleasure.
There was no one to hear the quiet panic in my acquiescence, the silent loss of time squandered in determined hopefulness. I was less myself after you left, hollowed out and angry; unraveled and awake.
And so we became strangers long after we first met, speaking in a muddled language of shared memories and complicit ignorance.
A snapshot of self forgotten except in the light of summer’s first arrogance when I miss the girl who held her breath for magic. The girl I knew before you.
hello, tuesday
June 16, 2015 § Leave a comment
Today feels a little like Monday, I started my day rattled and a little hurried. Yesterday I was prepared for routine, but last night I fell asleep distracted and unconcerned by the morning’s expectations. Piled into a late night moment of silliness with my family, I was completely unconcerned with tomorrow when dreams carried my thoughts elsewhere.
It’s summer, after all, school is newly dismissed and we’ve barely had time to become restless for our enthusiasm. Rain keeps interrupting outdoor play and indoor tasks beg sidelong glances and wishful thoughts of sunshine. We haven’t made vacation plans and our commitments feel a little cumbersome without the promise of escape.
There is no assumption of privilege in these wistful hopes, just the indulgence of undisrupted exploration and restful stillness. Something new to rustle the soul and engage the senses. Some days I forget that we choose our experiences.
So, today I’m charting my own course from my front door in search of happy, mindful moments of joy; meaningful conversations and mindful consumption, play and purpose. I’m dressing the day in my best attention and looking for a muse in the mundane.
summer lessons
June 10, 2015 § 2 Comments
Each summer dawns an uncertain but welcome reprieve from the predictable rhythm of school day routines. Some years our family escapes to adventure and other years we fall into the structure of previously orchestrated distractions. More recently our summers have evolved into an experiment in spontaneity.
In many ways the absence of plans has been freeing, our attentions are driven by whim. We rush towards casual invitations and welcome opportunity. Other days we are tasked to a burden of boredom that forces us to a simpler necessity of creativity. On these occasions I am reminded of my own carefree summer days, unstructured and filled with endless drifting; the chaffing restlessness that grates against rusty daydreams.
There is one small exception.
Over the years I’ve cornered pieces of the day for studies and responsibilities with a language that demands we validate play with work. This summer I am reframing the idea of summer learning.
To my children,
In the past I’ve bought academic books to ration time for skills, this year I want to give you a question or idea each day to wrestle for an answer. There’s something about working off the page that helps us think outside the box. (This was Dad’s idea.)
Rather than demand chores for play, I’d like you to play at helping. Work doesn’t have to be monotonous and play doesn’t have to be an enticement. I want you to manage your time and space with good humor and moderation.
Instead of handing you book titles someone else has deemed of value, I want you to find value in your love of reading. I’m worried less about titles or tracking your time between pages.
Most importantly, I don’t want to account for every minute. Summers were made for getting lost and finding time. Move with the sun and play under the stars, the days are as long as the possibilities are endless. The lessons are everywhere if you’re willing to look at the world with curiosity.
Love, Mom
by the stars
August 10, 2014 § 4 Comments
Last night’s laughter and easy conversation linger in cluttered rememberings, summer nights strewn like dishes across months of passing company. Our friends are scattered among full corners of our lives, old and new, folded together into the fabric of our lives. Backyard meals and outdoor escapades have drawn smiles that stain against our skin with the sun and stretch golden hours of sun-kissed days into evenings lit by fireflies and campfires.
scribblechic 