Maybe most days are so good like today and I miss it because my head just doesn’t feel like noticing what my heart does. When your head and your heart shake hands it’s calming and you can shake the sand out of little boy shoes and onto the floor for more sweeping and not mind. You know it means the day was more full than those shoes.
My heart and mind shook hands with each other and with a friend and we stood by rushing water and walked in the sun and got interrupted eleventy-billion times by these kids of ours that must.know.this.something.right.now. And those kids, they ran circles around our new friends’ workshop space, the one I mentioned here before that will be opening to bring in mothers and children to create and commune.
We stood in the workshop and thought out loud about story. We talked about motherhood and the pressure to appear that you have it all together and how it’s different than when we were kids. Then we talked more about story and I told her about doing Just Write, the very thing I sit here to type and how I wanted it to help people see that they are experiencing a story. Because when you write out the details of your moments, that’s just what you discover. And it doesn’t have to be anything other than exactly what it is to be a part of the great community of stories we are all spinning in big and small ways every second of always.
They are all strung together, infinity, all over the vast expanse of time and space, endless. They are like a spider web that hovers out over the world unattached to keep growing. And there are so many stories that like my friend said, it’s hard to figure out where you land on that web. So I wondered, maybe we know ourselves more and find our place in connection, in just the right place for us, by telling our story and listening to the people we meet with the intensity they deserve. We connect and land together sometimes and it’s so good.
The sand poured out of the shoes from the park and my shoulders are kissed by the sun. I see the lighter hues in the hair on the boys’ heads and I feel the sticky of sweat after wearing Elsie on a walk. All of the summer things came in the door with us today and we’re all better for it. We are lucky and I’m so grateful, to have passed the large part of a day in our story and theirs and in the sun.
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This is the 37th installment of Just Write, an exercise in free writing your ordinary and extraordinary moments. {Please see the details here.} I would love to read your freely written words so join me and link up below. You can add the url of your post at any time. Just be sure it’s a link to your Just Write post, not to your main page. Then please link back to this post in your post so people know where to go if they’d like to join in.) (Any links not following those two guidelines will be deleted.)
Also. Please take a moment to visit someone else who has linked up! It’s a really good way to meet new writers and get inspired by the meaning behind their moments. Word?
{ 14 comments }
Yes, story its what inspires, motivates, gives us legs to stand on some days. Well, most days. And I could see that sand, and sun and feel the sticky sweat and its good, all of it.
Shelly Miller recently posted..Because Imperfect is the Best Kind of Summer Vacation
I think I am coming to terms with the fact that it is impossible to know everyone’s story, and I wish I could. I think this exercise allows each story to be read by at least one person who might click. Thank you. :)
Steph
Stephanie Precourt recently posted..Presently
these stories? these shared slices of life? open my heart and allow me to walk into the day with more love in my heart for having read and shared. thank you for creating a space for this. it truly is special.
tara pohlkotte recently posted..pocket of sorrow, six feet deep
This is amazing. This space that you give us, the shaking hands of heart and mind, the new friend made through a garage sale. All amazing.
christine recently posted..Being Here
Its hard to stay in tha place where you can enjoy what’s happening while its happening, isn’t it?
Colleen recently posted..Proof that they really just wanna play with the box
After our walking-around-town-in-the-sunshine-day I stood at my kitchen sink and reflected on our conversations. I caught myself thinking not about what you had said, Heather, but about what I had said. It seemed strange. There, hours later, alone in my kitchin, I was editing the thoughts, the feelings, the comments I shared with you. Worried I had said something that didn’t represent me. Worried that my perspective would alienate you. Worried about my words that were strung around yours in the context of a really, really great and easy and interesting slice of day-with-kids. How strange. I shifted my thinking. I maneuvered my attention away from my own words and tried to dwell on yours. I realized that you are an amazing listener. Engaged. Reflecting. Capturing. Considering. Me? Maybe not so much. But I’m working on it….
What I love about Just Write is that it lets me catch moments that I might have otherwise forgotten. Things that you wouldn’t exactly put down in a baby scrapbook, but you still want to remember. Sometimes when the eloquence doesn’t come and it seems like I’m transcribing just the weekends events it seems futile, but then I go back. And I look at the pictures, and even if the words aren’t full enough the memories are and they all come back.
Thank you for doing this for us.
Marta recently posted..Festivals. Parades. Dinosaurs.
ah. this is beautiful. the sun and fresh air really are something else.
grace recently posted..3 years, 10 months.
Oh I’m trying to hard to have my heart and head shake hands every day. I see people around me accused of being “too earnest” and I think, wow, I’m the exact same way. So am I “too” earnest? I’m just me, this is how dramatic I really am in real life. I think in poetry, so I’m not being fake, even if you don’t like it. Not you, you, but the general “yous guys”.
This isn’t really related to your post is it? And look at that, I did a Just Write in your comments, apparently. I also posted today. Hooray!
Arianne recently posted..8 months.
A beautiful post. More poem than prose. Thanks for bringing people together and helping us connect and share with each other-
I love this idea of the heard and mind shaking hands. At best, sometimes I think my heart manages to push my head out of the way.
I’m glad you shared your story—and so glad I came here to listen.
Oh how I 9as usual) love this. I am trying to get my head and heart to hold hands for the whole summer while all the kids are home b/c it goes so fast. It’s exhausting but I know we will both be blessed by it.
i’m so thankful you do just write, heather. love your words and heart. wish i could [would?] come read & participate more.
love recently posted..little [BIG] moments.
A conversation in my house today.
“Brin! Do you know what the biggest number EVER is?”
Poor Brin doesn’t know what she is walking into.
“No, what is it?”
“Infinity. Nothing is bigger than infinity.”
So together, we are all living the biggest story ever told!
Gianna recently posted..More Sweet Peas & Buddies
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