Just Write {104}

I was getting out of the car, grabbing my bag and another bag, my coffee mug, and I dropped my glasses on the driveway. I bent down to get them and saw a snail in the grass. The squishy looking sluggish body was carrying a big shell. Just like that. It amazed me.

My glasses were scratched, but I just needed to crouch down like that for a little while and watch the creature.

I got out my phone and took a picture but it was like he was camera-shy and got inside his swirly shell before I snapped the photo.

I went in the house, put down all the things and put the picture on Instagram. Everything needs cleaning, so I looked around at where to start. I had been at school volunteering and now it was already late morning, so much to do, a meeting this afternoon and on and on, the thoughts of things to do kept rolling in, one after another. I wanted to get inside my shell and hide for a little while. Instead I started to go through the pile of mail on the counter, all the things that came over the days I’ve been away at Type A.

An overdue bill, ads, another bill and then an envelope with my name on it, the return address one of one of my dearest friends. I opened the card and saw Curious George holding a bunny in his hand, smiling. The inside was covered with words, both sides and the back. It was a touchpoint with one of my people, her description of where she was while writing and what she and her boys had been doing and what was happening around them. It was a Just Write, in a card. It was beautiful, like poetry and I wanted to write back to her, that very second. So I took two steps at at time, things to tell her kicking up behind me as I hurried. Slipping away.

I got my computer and went out to my back porch, sat down in the rocking chair and felt the air turning from morning cool to later morning luke warm. The grass is getting beyond overgrown and the dog’s nose seems tickled by it as she suns herself just past the shade of the spreading limbs of our trees.

Everything looks the same as just before I left except that grass is a little longer. It calls for me like all the rest, from the buzzing lists in my head. But I will write. I will tell my friend what a gift her words were to me this morning, in the midst, a moment with her and feeling myself in her details, the push and pull and beauty of life.

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This is the 104th 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, and please don’t link to posts that are not freely written in the spirit of capturing moments–you know, don’t link to how-to posts, lists or sponsored posts. Also, please link back to this post in yours so people know where to go if they’d like to join in.

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? Thank you!