I was folding laundry, thinking, making piles. We don’t have a TV in any kind of way at this new place. It’s been almost two months in here and no one seems to notice. The kiddos have their iPad time and they call it good. They slip-n-slide and sidewalk draw and play some sort of terribly loud game in the basement with big plastic balls bouncing off the empty walls. They play with our new guinea pig, Butterscotch. They argue and fuss and fight, too.
We had some kind of contraption hooked up to the Internet that would play us Hulu and Netflix but then it stopped working, so we stopped using it. No one seemed to notice.
There are some things that you can pay more attention to if you fold laundry with no TV on. The sounds in silence. The way your body feels too tired to pick up even one more tiny sock. And when you feel these things, along with the actual emotional feelings, your body is reminding you to go to bed.
So last night I listened and I finished the folding (barely) and I trudged bleary-eyed through the darkening house and I got into bed. I picked up my book and I felt the coolness of the sheets, and how soft they are because they’re the Best Ones. They just are, I don’t even really know why. They just feel the best. Does everyone have a Best set of sheets? The ones that come through the occasional rotation and bring a little extra Happy?
I hope so.
What you learn from not having a TV is not only that no one really misses it, other than a tiny bit at first, is that there was never really a lot of time for it anyway. What I mean is that I think I was making time for it, but mostly by moving other things out of the way that feed my soul in a different way. It’s not that I think TV watching is evil, it’s just that my brain is already on overload and sometimes it craves the silence so much more than I knew.
I haven’t been online much at all either, what with the big move and new life and now a building to grow a business with one of the smartest, most energetic women I know…well, there’s just a lot to do. It’s all good, moving toward Really Good Things…but that doesn’t mean that everything is a piece of cake. It is just a matter of
keep on going.
There is happiness in the silence with no TV and even with laundry. It is quite like the moments you can’t explain. Like how Elsie’s feet were so so very dirty last night, from mud. And she was in the shower and she couldn’t really get all the mud from between her toes and dried up high on her ankles. It was in the way I slid open the door and asked her if she needed help and then she sat down and said yes. Her water splattered face was red with the warm and she looked so tired. So I took the washcloth and I got it to go between those muddy toes and I noticed the way her toenails are still so small. And how much I love the mole between the first two toes on her right foot.
:::::
This is the 146th 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. There are really no rules, besides Just Write! (Then 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?
Comments on this entry are closed.