Soul Food

 Instrument cases litter the floor. Voices bounce off the walls. Strings vibrate. Music fills the air. I'm stopping to write a bit with sweet music all around.

Thanksgiving vacation has filled us up with sun and sounds and sweet potato casserole. We didn't know we would spend Wednesday digging in warm white sand, watching the sun drop behind the horizon, and playing with Georgia friends; it was an unexpected reunion. It was a glorious day. It was soul food. We returned home and fell into bed.

Filled up, I woke to run the Turkey Trot here in Tallahassee. I love to stand freezing cold jumping up and down with a group of strangers. I can smell clean clothes as we bundle and wait for the start. Soon the clean will wash away with the warmth of the sun mixed with sweat and strength and exhaustion. The race starts and I zig zag through the crowd looking for a space for my pace. It takes awhile today. The crowd is big. 6000+. People take off too fast and talk too much and fall away. I breathe and run and breathe and run and find a pace, like a swimming stroke. Just keep it steady. At mile four I feel my legs grow weak, but with strong lungs and a steady pace, I can keep it. Mile Six. I know I can finish strong. 41:40. Ahhh. I could go on and on. We collect water and oranges and head home to rest now and eat a lot.

Thanksgiving with friends and home again. We play all Saturday with the children at Mission San Luis. They watch the blacksmith for an hour. They shoot a bow and arrow, they watch the men dressed in period costumes shoot a musket. A neighbor has a tree heavy with tangerines. A freeze might settle in tonight so they must be picked. Amelia rides the little motorcycle all over the yard. Now turkey soup and a bluegrass jam. The children sleep and the walls collect sweet sounds.

Our souls are fed.








Comments

  1. KellyNovember 25, 2012 at 3:19 PM

    I can hardly recognize George Wilder with his long hair. He is still in the number one position for future husband for Aida :: (according to her, that is). Glad you had such lovely company and weather!

    ReplyDelete
  2. JoniNovember 28, 2012 at 6:31 PM

    such a treat to spend the day with y'all! Definitely soul food for us too. The mid-70s temps made me want to move to Florida :) Plus you're there. But....we'll be staying here and looking fwd to future visits!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Love Them. Feed Them. Talk To Them. The Rest Is Icing On The Cake.

Image
We've been homeschooling for ten years. At LEAST once a week I think that homeschooling is the worst possible thing on the planet. I look at my kids and think, "I've got nothin'!" It is scary. It is hard. How many hundreds of times have I called my extremely patient husband and yelled, literally screamed into the phone, "I CAN'T DO THIS!" There was a day, in the middle of a lesson that wasn't going well at all, that I walked out the back door, walked to the pool, jumped in fully clothed and yelled as loud as I could under the water. I got back out of the pool, calmly walked inside, changed my clothes and continued with the day feeling much relieved. George, my husband and biggest cheerleader - also a major part of our homeschooling life, is diligent to walk me off the cliff of homeschool despair. When I feel like I am failing our children, he offers me this morsel... Before I give you his advice, I would like to mention at this poi...
Read more

Child's Play

Image
Amelia wanted to have a coffee shop party for her friends to celebrate her birthday. We planned it all week. We named the coffee shop, "Amaruma Coffee." George Wilder says it means, "Good Coffee". We made the logo. Of course it included a tree (Amelia draws trees constantly) and coffee beans. We made decisions about what to serve and how to serve it.  Then Amelia decided to make a castle. She found some bricks in the yard and started making a wall/castle. George Wilder was responsible for making the mortar from ash and water and dirt. They worked on the wall/castle for days. The coffee shop became the side show and the castle would be the center of play. They walked through exactly how the day would go all afternoon Thursday. It was nearly impossible to do any school work Friday. They looked longingly toward the castle/wall. There was work to do. It had to be finished and decorated and set up for extensive castle visiting. There were problems to be sol...
Read more

Wilderness Whines

Image
When the "but I want . . . " sirens wail and "just one more time. . . " voices ring in chorus, and the "when will we be there?" interrogations press hard against ear drum, we stop and talk about the power of wishing for something that isn't ours to have and how it is debilitating and hard and caused an entire nation to get stuck in a desert for 40 years and if they would have just seen past the "when will we get there" they might have enjoyed the journey and found glory waiting without so much turmoil. We are cuddled and there are lots of tears as I explain the weeding of the whine and how it must happen now. And suddenly I realize that perhaps I've been wandering around. Yes, I have. I am in a desert of whine. It is bedtime and we turn off the lights and pray for grace for the next day. The next day arrives quickly. I lace up and head out the door for a morning run and prayer. It comes to me as I put one foot in front of the...
Read more