Slow Motion and Background Music

I’ve been slow to write down life. It seems a bit repetitive. Garden. Cook. Clean. Nurse. School. Cook. Clean. Change A Diaper. Swim. Cook. Clean. Sell produce. Laundry. More laundry.

And if it isn’t mundane, then it is strikingly full of activity. Pop corn this and jump on that.

 

Last Monday morning, I squeezed in a run and got the pool scrubbed and the coffee going. I thought I’d spend a moment meditating on the day while the house was quiet, but before I’d read the first words, a red head appeared in the room. And then another and another.  And George walked in with little Hannah. It’s a busy house in the blink of an eye.

We decided to take inventory in the garden with our coffee. I’d missed a phone call while we were out. It was the post office. Our chicks, we'd ordered, had arrived. The children dashed to the car in their pajamas. As the car left the driveway, the electrician was here for a big project. And before the heat, we collected produce. Pounds of potatoes and squash and beets. Green beans, cilantro, basil, lettuce and kale.

 

 

Chicks and electricians. A neighbor stops for eggs and produce. In there somewhere I’m scrambling eggs for breakfast and we all swim. Someone chases the squirrel off the bird feeder. Get ready for lessons. Learn about snapping turtles and the kings of England. And subtracting and multiplying and dividing. And can we please try to spell words the right way?

We write letters and thank you notes and we are hungry again.

It’s lunch time and we get out some assortment of veggies and start cooking.

We can eat what we are growing. Every meal brings chopping and washing and putting away.  Pickling and processing.

 

The garden is our science project. It is science class. It is communication and chemistry. We use ground cotton seed as a nearly organic fertilizer and the produce triples in size.

It is a lesson in math, in life and death and sales and management and marketing and record keeping.

 

And this all happens without background music and it isn’t in slow motion. It is messy and loud and when I cut onions, my face is covered in tears and the counter is toppling with mail and compost and snacks and toys and pieces of that fall off and land on the floor and stay there for awhile.

It took four hours to write this. I’ve nursed, pumped, taken a walk with a five month old, put a three year old down for a nap, played a game of spades, made two phone calls, started black beans for supper, and cleaned up several rooms. And now I’ll sign off because there is a dispute about torpedos in the pool.