Thickly sweetend Southern air greets me. The sun shines through the trees, glistening on the wet grass.
Today, I have 2 place to go–that almost seems weird. Last night I went to a Bible Study group where we socially distanced. It was the first time together in 2 months. We ended up only catching up with each other and never picked up our study. It was still really nice to hear about each other’s lives.
Human beings need social interaction and friendship. I have no idea if socal distancing is the new cultural norm now or not, but its not normal for friends never to be less than 6 feet from each other, never to hug, or to go months and months seeing each other face to face. Even even of it does become the cultural norm; its not normal.
The sun plays peekaboo with a cloud. The birds sing on.
Morning mist surrounds us like a set of sheer curtains. The sweet southern air blends with my coffee. A rooster crows and kids ask me questions through their bedroom window.
The morning is new and the day presents its challenges. What is before me today that I physically can take one? I need to teach a child to read. I need to teach a child to relax but also do long division. I need to snuggle a child. I likely will need to talk world events and politics with another and I need to watch that YouTube video on writing my daughter sent me, “Mom you gotta watch this!” She’s asked me 3 times if I’ve watched it.
I need to sort my thoughts, decide if I’ll do the weekly watercolor challenge for the FB group my mom got me to join–a consistently edifying FB experience, do the laundry of course, it is ever present, but I’ll probably forget about it again. I suppose everyone will be hungry at some point. And there is a bunch of paper work….online paper work….I need to figure out.
The day is short, the list is long, the important things never end up on the list and its time to take on the day.
As the day grows the air seems even thinker with mist and sweetness.
The morning is filled with clouds in sky and mind.
How will I ever make my mind focus today? Social media isn’t going to help, that’s for sure.
Wednesday Night, May 27, 2020
Night 75
The night air is thick and sweet. A bull frog calls and the sky leaks or maybe its just the trees. Night time birds call. Its beautiful and peaceful.
My physical life was nothing like on line life today. It rarely is. When social media is full of the awfulness of the world, my general response is to tell myself to get off social media. To act in the real world. To take on my very real problems and responsibilities with out distraction. They are what I can dovin this life to make the world a better place. Ignoring them certainly will make the world worse.
But today I was pulled in another way but the pulling was in my own heart. If I pull further away from social media– a question I wrestle with each day–am insulating myself like a boy in a bubble? But talk is cheap and typing online is cheaper–certainly my poorly edited stream of thought is. Is publicly denouncing what is being publicly denounced any brave act of fighting for justice if all it does is make me look like I’m good. Is that my motive, to make myself look good? That is vanity and striving after wind for sure. Yet what value is a blind eye?
Mosquitos leave me be. A distance train whistle blows accompanied by dogs barking. The bull frog drums. The birds calls shift to night sounds. The crickets fill in the spaces like liquid. The windchime puctuates each phrase. I head inside to the sounds of kids and dishes.
The breeze is cool and not humid, the air is warm but not dry. The sky is cloudy but not dark. The rain is coming on the wind.
My husband gave me his black coffee and kept my creme coffee this morning and everything else seems backwards or off kilter. Even the schedule for the day. Since the rain is predicted for the afternoon, I told my boys they could play outside this morning and we would do our school lessons on the afternoon. They are currently building stuff out of bamboo and duck tape. I’m praying their inner Phineas and Pherb lasts all summer
It is very warm this late morning. Warm summery smells and lawn mower sounds fill the air. Someone on the porch has sunscreen on. The boys are crowding the porch, and off the porch, and then inside leaving the door open and the out again leaving the door open. If the morning was quiet before I arrived its been broken.
Snap shots of moments:
One son follows me out side and leaves the door open.
I see they are eating dried out waffles that are basically crackers and with as crumbley as they are, the porch is the best place.
One son lays next to me on the porch swing in full on summer boy mode. No shirt, no shoes and drinking a can of left over sprite* with no fizz left.
One son brings me a clover flower as a surprise and leaves the door open.
Another closes it then opens it to find out what I wanted but what I wanted was for someone to close the door.
I’m alone for a moment and this moment is where I stop because they’re will be no more alone moments to finish up the post.
*Sprite is not all that common appearance around here, but we celebrated a birthday last night and the boys apparently saved their unfinished cans of Sprite in the fridge. (Yuk).
The sky is dripping. My first slow-mo video is like a metaphor of myself. The thing I’m looking at never seems to be what my focus is.
Its been 70 days since school was canceled and our country started shutting down. I have a few conflicting thoughts.
One is that I don’t think it is healthy for society, in the long run, to take risk completely out of the authority of the individual. It make keep some people safer in the short term but long term I think it will cause unintended consequences. There are studies that show when children play in very low risk environments or in ones they are not allowed to take risks, that they never learn how to asses risk and dangers. This puts them in greater danger later. Other studies show that people are less careful when they wear helmets and safety belts, and stand closer when wearing a surgical style mask. I know there needs to be some balance to personal risk responsabilty and government responsibility. Volumes of books are written on it and volumes more could be written. But in the end if I had to choose a side, I know which one I’m on.
The other side is that I’m greatful our life outside of home was canceled. I know its weird but the first week I literally woke up every morning with an enormous amount of relief. I have asked myself over and over again what that says about myself and or my life before the world shutdown. I still don’t know, and I doubt I will know for awhile, maybe not until the world is turned back on.
I’m still processing why being home for so long has been good for me and maybe all of us. I think one reason is we have moved 2 times in 2 years once at the end of school and then at the beginning of school. It was at the end of homeschooling years for our teens, and the beginning of school for our youngest and a new homeschool community for all of us. It was a little like what I imagine happens to a computer (at least older ones) if you were to unplug it while its shutting down and then when its booting up, especially if it has updates its supposed to make. I felt we needed a hard reset with time to work out any bugs. I know so little about how computers actually work I probably shouldn’t make analogies to them. But its the best I have for now. I guess that means I have a slow CPU brain with little hard drive space…OK I’ll stop with the computer analogies now, I promise.
The sky is no longer dripping but dumping, the dam has been breached.
Damp and overcast, cool and sweet, still but not slient, A new day, a new morning.
Today my teens will officially be finished with school. Technically last week was the end but one of my teens has an AP test to take today. My 3rd and 4th graders have a bit more they need to do for school, particularly because we had to start homeschooling late last fall because we moved in August.
I’m not sure how to view the Summer. Normally the Summer is a lot more free time at home sprinkled with camps, vbs, family vacation, and camping trips. But right now all of those are canceled. We already feel like we have had a lot more free time so now what do we do? Obviously there are plenty of chores and a few more that come with summer but we need to find an enjoyable aim.
Meanwhile the spring flowers are starting to fade. Here is one of the last rhododendron flowers.
Its a cool misty morning. My mind seems to catch the mist or maybe the mist caught it and took it with it. My thoughts float around like dreams or are my dreams like thoughts? Problems and issues and ideas and stories dissociate like the vapor they ride on and then another story comes to mind, but its niether new or old but possibly both.
My next story idea. Is to rewrite historic tragedy in modern day. Our hero wants to be a Scientist when he grows up. He works hard in all his science and math classes. He reads all the past studies and sciencetific literature. He begins to have success and acceptance in time. One day he discovers an anomaly in some in previous data that doesn’t fit with the stated conclusions of the Scientific leaders and what is generally accepted by the Scientific community. Being a good little Scientist he studies more and makes some conclusion and writes it all up in a paper.
The Scientific community however see his conclusions and believes he is a science denier and that his in anti-science. They move to kick him out of school, they threaten to rescind his grants, and never allow him to publish anything in any science journal again. So after a big inquiry and investigation he sees all his hopes and dreams coming to an end all he ever wanted to be was a good scientist. He risks loosing all his friends and msybe even his family so he takes it back his study. He says its just a fiction.
Years later other scientists see the anomalies and eventually the Scientistific community is split the Original Scientists still kick people out for not accepting all of there stances but eventually agree that some of there previous stance were wrong. The second group interprets Science differently which causes each scientist to interpret it for themselves which causes more fracturing in the second group.
But I’m probably being unfair to Gallelo and Science and the Catholic church or the Protestant Reformation. Remakes are rarely a good idea. Ones mind maybe shouldn’t always follow the mist.
Rough Draft ¶aragraphs 