The streets through the neighborhoods here are so curvy, so when I ask the kids to spy Halloween decorations as I drive, they have to do all the looking. I’m too busy making sure I don’t remove my eyes from any surprises around the next bend. Today I glanced, because this ginormous blown up black cat was so…well, distracting. It was as big as the front yard’s trees and those trees were big. I only caught a glimpse of the cat, and a middle-aged man loading things into an SUV in the cat’s driveway.
The radio was playing Family of the Year’s song, Hero:
…But I’m just a kid like everyone else.
So let me go
I don’t wanna be your hero
I don’t wanna be your big man…
And I wondered if the man in the driveway feels like that. Like I do sometimes–just a kid like everyone else. I wonder, does he think, even if he’s a good man and loves his family, What am I doing here? In suburbia, on a curvy street, with a huge cat on my yard? How did this happen?
does he wonder?
The days are so beautiful right now with the Texas temps dropping, and everyone seems to be out, walking and taking advantage of not sweating buckets. I waited at a stop sign and watched two moms with strollers, wearing their exercise clothes. It looks so simple. Get up, eat breakfast, put on the work out clothes, put the baby in the baby buggy. Go.
It’s never that easy, of course. It just looks that way.
You wake up and you have a baby and then maybe more and so you have kids, and you go, Wow, when did all of this happen? I mean sometimes you do, anyway. It happens for me, where it just hits me, out of the blue…whoa, we have three kids…. It’s all so busy and good and hard and we’re tired and then it’s a blur that we can’t slow down. Lately I’ve been wanting to just get off the ride for a while. Excuse me! Hold the ride! Turn it off! Let’s just sit here for a little while!
If it could stop, what would we do? I think we would just be together. Those are the best times, when we’re not running from thing to thing. When we’re just side my side or in the next room. We don’t even have to talk, we’re just there. With, and home.
Time is currency.
Your masquerade
I don’t wanna be a part of your parade
Everyone deserves a chance to
Walk with everyone else
So the boys were dropped off and the driving and listening to music and thinking were done. I was back home and going over my list of writing that’s due and then I realized the fridge was empty, so I went to get the groceries, after I put the laundry in the dryer and started the next load. And these are not things I have to do for them, these are things I do for all of us, so we can be together.
Let me go
I don’t wanna be your hero
I don’t wanna be a big man
Just wanna fight like everyone else
That big black cat, wobbling on its air-filled legs in the wind. Just a glimpse of life around the bend. And maybe that’s just it: The happiest people are those that aren’t trying to feel perfectly comfortable in their own lives, their own skin. No they don’t expect that, but maybe they’re simply the ones that keep their eyes open, to just drive.
It can be really good when all you do is pay attention.
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{ 6 comments }
Awareness and a willingness just to sit back and listen as they tell us what their world is made of. We bring them into the world, the least we can do is let them show it to us. I love your Just Write and the links that follow; thank you for sharing.
Lynda M O recently posted..Sweetness that Makes One Weep with Joy
I feel this so much, all the time. There’s a short story, To Room 19, by Doris Lessing, which is terribly depressing as a whole, but it speaks to this. How it all came – the home, the kids, the life, the laundry, the existence – from two people meeting and deciding one day to be together. How we created it all, without realising.
I have this thought all the time…like I look around and can’t believe how lucky I am to have this life. We have a nothing-weekend planned coming up…where we’re just together doing nothing…and I can’t wait.
Tiffany recently posted..Just Write
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about who “the happiest people” are, and what that means, so thank you, for giving me this to think about and reminding me to pay attention.
Molly S Roy recently posted..Do Happy People Make the Best Parents?
This makes me miss my hometown. :)
And you’re right, it only LOOKS that easy…
Elaine A. recently posted..To Believe Her
this makes me cry.
because it reminds me a bit of what i wrote as well.
how i feel like a kid myself inside sometimes, then i turn around and…
WHOA. When did all ….. this…. stuff? happen?
and yes, three kids. omg. and getting the baby into the buggy, and exercise? that’s not happening here.
i just wrote about showing up. i can’t handle any more than that right now. oh, and the groceries. because, candy.
erin margolin recently posted..I Was There. I Showed Up.
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