Today’s moment was simple and pure. While my oldest three children packed lunches and played for hours in the woods designing and building an epic fort and tracking animals like foxes and deer, my husband, five year old daughter, and I went for a walk. We meandered along past homes built on developed farmland during the post World War II housing boom. We strolled along through the Barclay Farmstead, and took a trip back in time to enjoy the beautiful farmhouse built in 1816 by a Quaker farmer in a bygone era, marveling at just how different, and similar, life must have looked, then and now. Slowly, we walked through little family garden plots, some teeming with stunning flora and greens and vegetables and others marked with past-prime sunflowers and done-producing summer plants. We leaned over to smell the fragrance of some still-going roses and we felt the soft magenta velvety wisps of celosia. As we looked up, we began to notice, and then seek out, the brand new yellows and spotty reds of newly turning leaves on the tippy top branches of our mature neighborhood trees. We began to collect some of these fallen pops of color and hold them in our hands, in an attempt to make a rainbow. Our little girl, our youngest of four, our baby who is no longer a baby, delighted in the time together with us and relished our undivided attention. Skipping ahead in her unicorn sweatshirt, out of the clear blue sky, she turned to my husband and I and said, “I’m really enjoying my life.” (Insert: all the swoony heart eyes). I asked why and she said, “I was just breathing in the fresh air and I love seeing all the pretty colors up and down and all around. Also I love being with you.”
And that’s really the whole deal. I hope you enjoy your life today. Look up and down and all around and see all the pretty colors there are. Even with all the strife and sadness in this world, we can sometimes find just a smidge of peace if we turn down the noise and open our eyes to see all the beauty that there really is.
Care to share your thoughts?