Day Twenty-Six: Appreciate This

Twenty six days of being at home. Some observations from this vantage point in the journey:

It is amazing to be able to watch spring unfold in such detail. Watching the redbuds bloom on bare branches, then seeing the tiny leaves appear, catching that moment when both flowers and leaves coexist on the branches, then watching the flowers disappear and the leaves take over for the rest of the year. I've never been able to watch the land come to life in such close detail, and it is a gift.

Happy boy in the mud.

I miss my routines and my coworkers, who are lovely, intelligent people and good friends. But, I am loving this life too. Jeremy has often said over the years that I am too social to make it as a homesteader, that I would get stir-crazy and need to be around people more. I think he's wrong.

My kids are pretty good at not being around people too. They occasionally say they wish they could see their friends or their grandparents, but mostly they're pretty jazzed to be able to play at home all day.

Appreciate this.

Another observation about my own internal landscape has to do with the topic of mortality in general. When I was eighteen and a dear friend died in a skiing accident, I had the reality of mortality thrust upon me in a life-changing way. I have since lost more friends: to cancer, to accidental overdose. I've seen friends cope with the loss of a child. I've seen friends lose parents. I've lost all of my grandparents except for my grandfather-in-law, who is thankfully still on the farm, a healthy 87-year-old. Since my first experience with loss, I have understood to the core that we are all walking on thin ice, every single day of our lives. Being in the midst of a global pandemic has brought this fact to the forefront of my thoughts again. Jeremy, our children and I are healthy now, but you never know how long you have with those you love. The only answer to this that I've come up with is to worry less about the length of your life, and pay more attention to the depth of your life. How deeply are you loving this world? How deep is your gratitude? How deep are your connections to your friends and family? How deep in the belly is your laughter? We have very little control over the length of our lives, but we do have great power over how deeply we live.

This too.

I have moments every day where I feel urgently: appreciate this! When we were too impatient to wait for the sourdough maple walnut bread to cool, and we cut in to the steaming loaf and ate slices warm with butter. When I took the kids for a paddle in the canoe around the farm pond, and felt the peacefulness of water, blue sky, the quiet dip of the paddle. When, afterwards, we were in a dog pile of sweet puppies and their giant mama. When a friend sent me a hilarious text and I laughed so hard I cried. When Jeremy hugged me after a stressful dinnertime, and let me just lean into his chest and share my woes, silly as they were. It may sound morbid, but during the small, sweet moments of my life I almost always hear a voice telling me, appreciate this, right now. I can't be the only one who does this, can I?

I understand that this take on life does not protect you from the pain of inevitable loss. It just makes the weight of it a bit more bearable when it does land on your shoulders.

And this.

Tomorrow is Saturday, the day before Easter. I've decided to spend the weekend doing some catch-up cleaning and planning some Easter fun. I have decided to make cinnamon rolls for our breakfast, we're going to be hiding eggs as usual. But I haven't thought of other ways we can make the day special. So, weekend plan: make Easter magical.

This too!

I hope you, my dear readers, most of whom are my close friends and family, know that I appreciate you and wish you so many sweet moments during this stressful time.