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Showing posts from August, 2023

What makes you unique?

At the end of the first day of school, I was in a 2nd grade classroom where the teacher asked each child "What makes you shine, what makes you glow, what makes you special, what makes you unique?" One kid yells out, "I was born with a tail."

Positive Sweep

One of my sons sprained his wrist, the other broke his. One cast. One brace. I nearly cried about the lost swimming time at the end of the summer. We haven't even been to Waterworld yet! Unheard of. I bet my son ice cream that he wouldn't need a cast. I knew he probably would. I didn't want to win a bet so much as to cushion the frustrations and disappointments of spending the rest of summer in a cast. And let's be honest, I wanted to go out for ice cream. Win, win. He wasn't even all that upset in the end. He said that at least we still get to spend time together and at least we spent so much time on the river earlier in the summer and that it's really not so bad. He's usually the reactive one and I'm usually the positive sweep. I'm proud that there's nothing wrong with his broom. We also bought them Nintendo Sports to play with one hand. It's really pretty fun. Especially once my younger son figured out that he could take it outside and pla...
I wonder about the capillary action of our lives, which actions taken in small micromotions that move a nutrient or two here or there add up to be an entire system of goodness delivery. Noticing the house finch's shadow when it passes, feeling the pellets of cold rain on your face and running anyway, the wink at a bored toddler in her stroller, the moment to squeal about a former coworker's baby instead of saying you have a meeting. The way the feeling of participation is like the blood flow that travels into our tissues, simply diffusing itself into smaller and smaller pathways. Connecting our tissues to each other. It is in actions. Is it these small ones?  I judge people on whether they pick up trash as they walk or if they look at it, and choose to leave it. Though perhaps judge isn't the word. I judge outright littering. But picking up the litter of others, I notice. The people who never litter, who pick things up and put them away even when they don't have to, it...