It’s the Little Things

All the big stuff is mostly done: the auction auctioned, the art show hung, the birthday party partied, even school is almost finished.

This Sunday was a day of rest. It was a day with no printing or framing or party-bag making, no Lego people trimming or minifig drawing. It was a time to sit back and take stock, rest my still weary shingly legs and see just how much clean laundry awaited folding (turns out about 6 over-flowing baskets.)

So I sat at breakfast and looked at my children, at the freckles that have sparked up in places where hastily applied sunscreen never reached, and at their hands, where Ripley’s Believe It or Not fingernails grow at an alarming rate.

Tim took them all on a bike ride adventure while I prepared our first feral dinner of the coming summer season.

And then we headed to the beach.

Yes, the big stuff is momentarily done, the stuff people put on calendars and send invitations for and put on resumes or photograph for memory books.

And thankfully, blissfully, it is time again for the little unimportant things: the crescent moons of dirty fingernails, the first chilly drops of ocean water in their hair, a girl watching her reflection dance in the receding tide, the tiniest clam in a palm, and finally, a sleepy ice cream cone eaten while wrapped in terrycloth.

The big stuff, it’s like the bonging of a clock that says that momentous time has passed, while the little things, they are the minutes that hush and whisper and breathe.