Thursday, August 10, 2017

A little slice of my morning for you:

Through the open door, we can hear the girls waking up.  The baby, in her insistent little voice, chanting, "Mama!  Mama!  Mama!"  Her big sister, in her talking-to-baby voice, responding, "Nooo, not 'Mama.'  'Addie.'"  This repeats for awhile and then, to our surprise, Ben and I hear the baby repeat, "Ad-die!  Ad-die!"  Ben and I lay side by side, just listening, laughing to ourselves, and waiting for them to get out of hand.  Their shrieks will eventually sound less like fun and more like frustration, and that will pull us out of bed at last.
A breeze floats through our open window, just cool enough, scented with last night's rain.  I've been noticing something strange and wonderful since we've been here.  For the past few years, I've struggled, not only to write, but to want to write, to choose, in a rare moment of free time, to make the effort to open myself to words.  Time and time again, I've discovered that the writing will leave me happier and more carefree than I was before, but even knowing that, I've struggled even to want to do it.
I think now, that it's because I hadn't been taking the time to enjoy much of anything.  I don't know why that part is easier here - maybe because this is where I lived before I was married, before we had children, when my time was all my own?  But I love these morning breezes.  I love the trees, some of them enormous, that shadow us on our little walks through the neighborhood.
Last night, at a mutual - youth - activity, I found myself gazing at the sky.  I probably should have been taking greater pains to socialize, but it was just such a pretty sky, and such a peaceful moment, to watch the clouds going about their business, catching and releasing the sunlight.  After the activity ended and everyone went home, I drove around for a bit, just because I hadn't had enough of seeing and smelling.
That's how it's been, living in Utah again.  And when I get to that quiet time in the evenings, after the kids are in bed and before I'm ready to turn in myself, I can't seem to settle down until I've taken a few minutes to splay my thoughts on a page or screen.  I'm grabbing as many of those moments as I can, because I know that this might all come as a result of the novelty of once again living somewhere new.  New, but not new.  The energy to write is very much in danger of succumbing to old, bad habits, or just to the mundane rhythm of passive living.
It's funny because this is the most urban place we've lived - and Ben and I often said that we wanted to be somewhere rural.  Small towns and seclusion have always attracted us, but here something is awake in me that has been dormant for years.  Here, I feel that, for the moment, I am just where I need to be, notwithstanding the scents of cigarette smoke and dog food that sometimes ride the breeze.