In the Garden (Playing)

Riding the old yellow Cub Cadet, I mow long rectangles around the back fields.  Out in the garden, between me and the road, my husband works with the kids, tying short, thick tomato plants to their stakes with long strips of cotton.

From where I sit, rattling and humming along on the old mower, the boys are bright, little flowers that have sprouted legs, walking, tumbling, running through the garden in their shirts of bright teal and red.  My husband is the tallest flower, an iris perhaps, overseeing the work and play.

The twins flop and hop climbing and falling on each other and by the time I move on to mowing the front, circling the overgrown bushes, they’ve pulled my husband down to the green grass.  He is a horse now, crawling along with two cowboys astride until they all tumble again to the earth.

 

There is such beauty there, in that wide open space, under the bright sun and blue and I am so thankful, for those flowers that grew in my body, for the legs they run on and for their father who plays with them there in the garden.   

This post is linked with Jennifer Dukes Lee.  She's telling a lovely story this week about life and death and kittens, so pop over to soak in some sweetness.

I am (a poem)

 

I am the mouse

who climbed up the side

of the milk pail, intending

only to take a sip. 

Leaning, I slipped,

and landed in a sea

of creamy white.

I am drowning now

in this moment

of sweetness.

There is no option

left, but to surrender

to its delight.

Photo source HERE. 

This post is linked with  Unforced Rhythms and Playdates with God.

Never Lost

One of the twins was missing for a while the other day.  Not alarmingly so, but gone for long enough that I thought to go and look for him.  Striding around the garage, I saw him stretched tall on his tippy-toes at the corner of the back fence where the neighbor’s mulberry bush reaches over.   

That bush drops berries into our yard, like an old woman passing out candy to children, “Here you go dear.  No, no, take more than that.  Do you have a pocket?  Here, let me put some in there.” 

This is my shoeless boy, feet stained purple, and I left him there in his revere without letting him know that I knew where he was, because sometimes, I believe, children need to feel that they are off on their own in the world, wild, dangerous and free.

Later, while cooking dinner, I glanced out the kitchen window to see him squatting in the driveway, washing his little paws in a puddle.  Splashing his hands back and forth quickly, he then stood and turned, satisfied. 

That boy.  With the wide world his home, he will never be lost.   

This post is linked with Five Minute Friday.