Daily Grind

Everyday there is beauty. Small things, the way the light filters through the dusty window that has sticky fingerprints from curious children, brought to the window at breakfast because one of them sees a deer in the field. The syrup from breakfast gives away their moment of joy, leaves rainbows on the table cloth when married to the sunlight.

I will wash the windows later, when I forget about the beauty and sweetness of this moment.

That's what happens to our days, the ebb and tide of duty with happiness and childhood play, brings us back to the mundane and in and out of the fantasy play of the small ones.

Today I am working. I will work at the keyboard until my mind is scrubbed numb, then return home to hugs and laughter, make dinner, and scrub dishes and sticky floors until my hands are scrubbed numb. Maybe they will help. Maybe I will lure them to service with the promise of my own made up fairy tales. They cannot get enough of those some days. Other days I tell them their own creation stories. How they were wished for and born into the world. Or stories of their own heritage, grandmothers' struggles, swamp lore, or just stories of my own childhood shenanigans.

I may get a moment to steal away and go into the woods.

There is a blizzard coming tonight. The pond has frozen solid and clear. A dangerous kind of ice, dangerous because without cutting into it, it is too hard to tell how thick or strong the ice is but the clear view lures the curious out farther and farther over deep water, the underwater creatures dancing and waving and we almost forget we are human and would meet and icy wet death if we joined these creatures even for a moment.

This is the kind of thing fairy tales are made from. A warning, too late.

We will bundle up, stoke the fire, eat a simmering and nourishing soup with fresh hot bread, put extra blankets on the beds, make hot tea with honey, and watch the storm roll in. Pray that we put enough bedding in the animal shelters, that they find the water they need in the storm, and that Spring will eventually come back.

I think I will move my desk tonight, to a window with a view of the prairie and the storm fronts.