Surfing On A Dinosaur

The days have seemed long and wrong. Even though I live in Florida, and I’ve been barefoot most of the month, everything is blooming and I’ve even watched my kids swim in the pool a time or two, I’ve had the winter blues. Deep winter blues. I might as well live in Siberia — in a yurt. 

The days seem to drag on endlessly with nothing real marking the coming and going and doing. My glass has been totally half empty. The grass on my side looks really really brown. And the crazy thing is, we literally have the greenest grass around because George plants winter rye and it grows vibrantly green right through the dullest days. 

I reported to George my deep discouragement. Most of it falls on my feelings of never measuring up - for not having firework homeschool days and children inspired to a cheerful “yes ma’am!” and “I’ll be right there!” 

Instead, it has felt like very boring, dull, non thoughtful, day after day days of kids droning through their lessons and more “It’s not my turn to empty the dishwasher,” and “Let me just ride my bike down the driveway one more time.” And mess and distress and four kids doing this pile of stuff - Every. Single. Day. And it feels like there isn’t ever enough time to get everything done. Piles here and there and laundry rotting and getting washing again and meals unplanned and prepared haphazardly. 

George was trying to inspire me one night. Encourage might be a better word. Or maybe even drag me out of my slump. I wasn’t going to participate and went straight to bed. 

The next morning I woke up early. There were notes on the counter. One for each child and one for me. 

They all had questions and assignments and ideas for the day. My assignment was to draw a calendar of the month of March as a dinosaur and put myself somewhere in the picture. My immediate thought was that I would put my body mangled beneath the giant legs of such a dinosaur. I didn’t want to draw my month of March dinosaur. I could’t even think to put pencil to paper. But, after the kids eagerly tackled their cards all morning and reported back wonderful ideas and thoughts and sketches and notes, I was ready to try. 

Right before I attempted to draw myself in a tangled mangled mess beneath the dinosaur, a heard a little voice deep inside say, “Surf that beast.” My artist skills are limited, but I knew that was where I was going in the picture. I’m going to surf right over the top of March. March begins tomorrow and I’m ready to ride.