I usually enjoy having Saturday afternoons/evenings to myself when the girl's visit with their father (my one day solo) but this weekend his family was away so I had them all weekend long. It was a rare treat for us to have the whole weekend together. I felt as if I wasn't trying to squeeze everything into one day.
It was truly our first fall weekend. A blustery crisp day on Saturday and we trekked out to the far part of the lot by the edge of the woods and built teepees. Last year I was surprised to find they had built a teepee by themselves, but they built it in the middle of the yard and we had to take it down for mowing. This time we built one each, Karelyn's in a mossy spot at the edge of the woods, and Emily's in a little section off to the left side in a little grouping of trees.
The tropical storms we had a month ago had left us a multitude of fallen branches so we lugged as many as we could from around the back path, looking for the perfectly pronged first branch to get the whole thing started. Nothing fancy here, no canvas, no string, just a nice collection of branches forming out a little secret spot for each of them.
Karelyn of course couldn't keep shoes on her feet (she never can) and had her toes nestled in the cushioning moss. While they finished up I went inside to bake the oatmeal cookies Emily had made up earlier in the day and there was no better feeling than taking three of the first cookies out of the oven out to sit in the teepee and eat, warm and cinnamon tasting, sitting on the soft moss.
Later we went out to dinner at one of our favorite local restaurants, and we were in luck they had a fire going and we got a prime seat in front of it. So after a light dinner we filled up on dessert (chocolate cake for them pumpkin cheesecake for me) and headed home to curl up on the couch together and watch a movie.
Today I realized something. My life is pretty amazing. This IS the life I have always wanted for my girls and they are happy. Happy to spend the day scouring the woods, happy to bury their feet in starry night moss, happy to stir up a batch of cookies in the kitchen, happy to run leftover cookies, and chili and cornbread up the path to my grandparents next door, happy to spend time in my grandparents living room, Karelyn dancing in my grandfather's hat, Emily lying across the couch her head on my grandmother's lap her feet in mine.
Perhaps I should not always be thinking of the future, perhaps the best thing is to just enjoy the here and the now. I have the rest of my life to become. Right now I think I am content to just be.
That sounds like a lovely weekend. I want to be ten again and have a teepee. Why did no one ever make me a teepee? (apart from the fact that there are no big branches like that in this here concrete jungle!)
ReplyDeleteI have to remind myself to 'bloom where I am planted' too, and just enjoy what the here and now. What's that saying, something like 'one day you may look back on the little things and realise they were the big things'.