Just Write 153

I did not look at my email even one time yesterday. It was a Monday and a perfectly beautiful day, and I worked at The Middle Fork and you guys should have seen it. All the tables were full and people were waiting in the entry and thank the good Lord that one of the owners was there to man the cash register and make fancy lattes and such.

My feet hurt.

I love it when that place is busy. Except I say really random things to the people at the tables sometimes because I’m trying to remember so many things at once and move faster than I can. And my weird humor up and jumps right out when I’m overwhelmed, so there you have it. For instance, this one time, some people were trying to get a high chair to fit behind their table, in a corner, lifting it up and over. While they were doing this, I said, “Nobody puts baby in a corner,” and they were too young to understand the reference. I said, Dirty Dancing? Anyone? 

They stared at me blankly, so I just laughed and said never mind and hurried off to refill coffees.

After work I hurried to pick up the boys at school. Miles said his day was only 3% good because he fell off something on the playground at recess. Asher said his glasses keep falling off at recess.

Recess can be very stressful, bringing a day down about 97%.

All sorts of craziness ensued throughout the evening, too much to ramble on about here. Sometimes three kids are like 30. I don’t know what it is but when you add one more to two, you come up with about 97% more than you had before. And it feels like everything is just so fast. The days, the years, the new things to learn, the state of technology,….and all of the sudden, you feel like you have no idea what’s going on at all. It’s like keeping track of a restaurant full of people and what each of them needs, at once. It’s as if you are running to keep up, just like that, all the time. And suddenly you stop and look around and make a joke that all three don’t get and you see they are so much taller than even one week ago.

There was a table of women yesterday who told me I treated them like royalty. They were together for their 60th high school reunion. One of them said that they have kept in touch all these years, no matter their differences, and she listed: economically, married or single, in what they believe or what they like to do…

no matter those differences, they have remained friends, and have sent a “round robin” letter to each other, all these 60 years.

The big envelope gets very thick, she said. And people can’t believe we still do this, like, “You mean with a stamp?!” She said they could just email, of course, and each give their update on life for that season, but what they do is tradition, and it’s more fun, she said.

I was fascinated, impressed, and maybe even nearly moved to tears. I would love to sit with those years of letters, for hours. To be in their stories, learn of their lives.

The sharing of stories has been the thread throughout their years of friendship, holding them together from Napa to Chicago and back to Minnesota. Some are here and some are there and in so many ways they are still the same. I can see the youthful people in their eyes. Especially when they joked about traveling to be together at their age, and having slumber parties.

You can slow down life for a moment, just like that, caught up in a story.

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This is the 153rd installment of Just Write, an exercise in free writing your ordinary and extraordinary moments. {New here? Please see the details.} 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 link back to this post in your Just Write post so people know where to go if they’d like to join in.) (Any links not following those two guidelines will be deleted.)

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