Your Daily Miracle: Friday Afternoon Sunshine Spell
I sit on a dining room chair, my feet on another, my face full to the sun. I am half-tempted to pull the curtain, because the sun burns so bright that the words on the screen are beginning to turn from black to red. But I can't. It would be so terribly ungrateful.
My sister Heather says she understands sun-worshippers now that's she's lived here for four years. I understand, too. When the sun comes out, I want it all. I want it in my skin and my hair and across my hands as I write. Charlie, curled up like a newborn rabbit, loves it with all his animal-wisdom. He knows that sunshine is a rare occurrence in January, and a gift that we may not flaunt by flicking the curtain shut. Jack Russell with the soul of a cat, he'll find the sunshine, wherever it is, and bask, each white curl shimmering in the light as he sleeps.
Merry just slid cupcakes in the oven and the house smells heavenly; from the living room I hear my mother coaching Bea: "Down! And a....round. Good girl! Pick up your pencil. Make a little bubble. . .that's okay. Start down, and. . .uppppp! Pick up your pencil!" Bea is still struggling with letters, and though she longs to read, she has still not mastered her letters. I feel the tiny seed of parent-panic when I picture her classmates sitting their desks, writing simple sentences, while Bea still struggles to identify a T. Then I remember how Merry didn't really start reading until second grade, and how she's writing book reports and bibliographies and reading small libraries of novels only four or five years later, and I breathe again.
Just the same, it's nice to sit in the sunshine while someone else leads Bea through a task I've always felt was trying: teaching a kid to learn how to read. It's one of the best gifts you can give a kid--the keys to the kingdom, in fact--and sometimes one of the slowest, least rewarding, and most frustrating (except Elspeth, who basically taught herself to read and write and tie her own shoes).
Now Grandma and Bea are singing as they fold the laundry. "Nice underwear-hat," Grandma chuckles and Bea chuckles back. Then, "I smell something good!" Grandma calls.
While her cupcakes bake, Merry has plopped into a chair, still clad in her apron, to practice flute. "Ohhh, boy," she pauses for a minute before tooting several high, piercing notes. Charlie stretches in consideration of this onslaught on his doggie eardrums, closes his eyes again, twitches.
"That was 'Everything is Beautiful,'" Merry says, turning a page of music.
You got it, girl. Sunshine, the smell of cupcakes, my girls learning new things, a sleeping dog, someone else folding my laundry. Everything is beautiful.
My sister Heather says she understands sun-worshippers now that's she's lived here for four years. I understand, too. When the sun comes out, I want it all. I want it in my skin and my hair and across my hands as I write. Charlie, curled up like a newborn rabbit, loves it with all his animal-wisdom. He knows that sunshine is a rare occurrence in January, and a gift that we may not flaunt by flicking the curtain shut. Jack Russell with the soul of a cat, he'll find the sunshine, wherever it is, and bask, each white curl shimmering in the light as he sleeps.
Merry just slid cupcakes in the oven and the house smells heavenly; from the living room I hear my mother coaching Bea: "Down! And a....round. Good girl! Pick up your pencil. Make a little bubble. . .that's okay. Start down, and. . .uppppp! Pick up your pencil!" Bea is still struggling with letters, and though she longs to read, she has still not mastered her letters. I feel the tiny seed of parent-panic when I picture her classmates sitting their desks, writing simple sentences, while Bea still struggles to identify a T. Then I remember how Merry didn't really start reading until second grade, and how she's writing book reports and bibliographies and reading small libraries of novels only four or five years later, and I breathe again.
Just the same, it's nice to sit in the sunshine while someone else leads Bea through a task I've always felt was trying: teaching a kid to learn how to read. It's one of the best gifts you can give a kid--the keys to the kingdom, in fact--and sometimes one of the slowest, least rewarding, and most frustrating (except Elspeth, who basically taught herself to read and write and tie her own shoes).
Now Grandma and Bea are singing as they fold the laundry. "Nice underwear-hat," Grandma chuckles and Bea chuckles back. Then, "I smell something good!" Grandma calls.
While her cupcakes bake, Merry has plopped into a chair, still clad in her apron, to practice flute. "Ohhh, boy," she pauses for a minute before tooting several high, piercing notes. Charlie stretches in consideration of this onslaught on his doggie eardrums, closes his eyes again, twitches.
"That was 'Everything is Beautiful,'" Merry says, turning a page of music.
You got it, girl. Sunshine, the smell of cupcakes, my girls learning new things, a sleeping dog, someone else folding my laundry. Everything is beautiful.
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