In more ways than one, it is the growing season. Because it’s May, a time in our corner of the world when the sun and rain seem to work in perfect partnership, every living thing outside is teeming with color and flower. Chicks are hatching, seeds are sprouting; the branches of the rosebushes and the peony stems seem to lengthen each afternoon, craning toward the late day sun.
Inside our house, it is also a growing season, one that is unfolding apart from the natural course of things and one we never anticipated. Some of the growth is visible, and we joke about it daily: in my whole life, my hair has never been this long. But also, Garner’s piano playing has never progressed quite so quickly. We’ve never all worked and played so well together, and I’ve never been able to relax around a sink full of dishes or an inbox full of unread email. It’s not that we aren’t experiencing hard days and conflict in this house as we “stay-at-home”—we definitely are. But without the usual hard lines around our lives, and without the usual competitors for our time and attention, we are all, in some ways, flexing new muscles and finding new ways to thrive.
Tomorrow the grass in our back yard will be mowed for the first time in almost three weeks—somewhere along the line it stopped being a lawn and became a beautiful meadow. It needs to be tamed, I guess, but part of me has gotten attached to the wildness of it, and I’m tempted to just let it grow.
Today, my joy is watching the grass, the flowers, and the people in our house stretch into new spaces. #joyinplace
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