thoughts from the day

It is well after midnight as I write this. Last few days have been gray & cool. There was a smattering, spritzing sprinkles this morning and now the quiet drips and tinkering of rain splattering here and there across our roof lull my soul a bit. I have been restless these past hours. Struggling to center myself amidst the boys spring-time distraction. Their bodies want to play and move, while all I want is for them to sit still for 5 more minutes and finish their work, finish their supper, finish their chores, complete a task. As I lie here, I remember these spring days haunted me when I was younger. I too wanted to dash across yards, lie in the warming sun, shed my shoes and unwrap myself from the grips of winter.

There was a stretch there that every afternoon I came home from school I would tell my father I had no homework, then I would skip on out to play. After dinner, I would suddenly "remember." Then I would be up late, past everyone's bedtime finishing, or even worse, not getting it done at all and getting in trouble, again. In this late quiet, I wonder, "what was I thinking?" or perhaps more appropriately, "What were my parent's thinking?" I don't have the answers to that, I am sure my father wouldn't remember enough to let me know why they let me do this for months, years on end in springtime, he was very busy. And my mom has passed so I can't ask her. She had her own shop way back then, so perhaps she wasn't paying attention much to my school work either, except when my grades came home.

I share this as I smile. I KNOW my boys perhaps more than they think I know them. We are cut of the same cloth, taken down from the same strip of sky, shaken out of the rippling milky way together.

 I just wish I could convey better to them, that work and play CAN go hand in hand. And if you get your work done first, it will make the play all that more delightful.