Struggling through with joy... |
kind of.
Struggling through with joy... |
Today has been full of reminders to pay attention. Not to work, not to technology, not even to my most beloved people, but to pay attention to the very ground under my feet, the birds who live at the periphery of my vision, the ants who tunnel through the backyard.
My drive to work aids me with this. I speed down the highway to the small town 15 miles from where I live, the town I despised when I went to high school there. It often smelled like fifty different kinds of manure when I was seventeen, and the smallness of it felt like shackles, not peace. Today, when I turn off the highway I catch a whiff of the manure. I slow down, notice the fat yellow and black bird balanced on the telephone wire, wishing I could remember his name. I pass Buttercup, the male horse I named prior to seeing his maleness. Never mind, he’s still Buttercup to me, placidly munching his feed morning after morning. I pass the shaggy black cows and calves, nosing at the grass or staring at my car as I drive by. I see the kestrel poised to drop into the field and catch an unseen mouse. It is still early enough there is a mist dissipating on the fields where the mouse trembles. The mesas to the north are blurred by the thin fog. I say hello mentally to the mommy tree, bending protectively over a smaller tree forever reaching up, up to the branches of the mother. As I turn toward my school I inhale the view of the national monument to the south, red rock rising from the earth in columns and swoops, nothing much to me as a teenager but all glory and gratification now. When we moved back I swore I would never get tired of this drive, of the views from my classroom window. I haven’t. This place, my home, is knitted into the fibers of my soul; every rock, every tree, every bird, remind me of my place.
2 Comments
Alice
3/20/2018 08:56:09 pm
I love how you've named everything on your drive home. :-)
Reply
Sonja Schulz
3/28/2018 06:48:52 pm
beautiful! I love that you haven't gotten tired of this view---and your last line is genius.
Reply
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