This post is being written from an undisclosed location. There’s no cell service, but there is WiFi, and while I have not completely honored the “no work during this vacation” rule, I have only popped on to social media to do professional stuff, not to post pictures of my girls in paradise.
I’m in my sacred place. When I tuck my girls into bed, in addition to calling in the sweet family ghosts, I bid my own child-self to watch over them.
Here, my daughters count the same faded roses on the wallpaper of the “middle bedroom.” They creak back and forth in the same backyard swing. They’re told not to pull the bark from the same birches that line the grove beside the house like rows of endless summer sentinels.
My decision to keep the photos in the sanctity of my own smartphone’s memory wasn’t a conscious one.
I may start Instragramming at any moment. But each time I consider it, I think of the two days we spent in the car to get here. Maybe you need to put yourself through that to take part in this sort of beauty.
Or maybe I’ll feel like this kind of perfection shouldn’t be hoarded and I will start to share.
And so, it seems that I am taking my own advice. A couple weeks ago, I asked is that adventure really worth blogging about?
This adventure is worth so much more. The blog can wait. The heron in the marsh, the tea in the pot, the children rooting into the same red earth that’s so much a part of their mama… that needs my attention right now.
A couple of sweet reads on the topic of pausing for what’s most important:
Brenna Layne talks about Recalibrating. Full of perfect lines, this piece is about getting back to the routine, making peace with being away, and wrestling a neglected story back into relationship with a big bear hug.
Stories, like people, get crotchety if they’re ignored.
Autumn is a truthful season, revealing the world in all its messy glory.
And then there’s Suzi Banks Baum on her Laundry Line Divine. In Monday Morning at the Lake she writes of how she took the advice about whether each summer holiday adventure needed to be blogged about. I love the way she danced with the idea, typing lightly in the midst of family in her most beloved place.
Creative practice happens no matter what the sky looks like.
So true, Suzi, but creative practice may need to take on a totally new form that has nothing to do with blogging and entrepreneurial vision when the sky looks like this...
