With seminars and essays, research and writing. With plotting and planning and travel. With life with a small person, a tiny whirlwind of mess and noise, with time off school and a small person ill and grumpy…
I don’t remember the last time I stopped.
Today was her first day back at whirlwind school, the walk in, full of chatter; I love our conversations in the morning, and the soft little hand in mine. I was also very happy to hand over my tiny dervish to the depths of mathematics, phonics and pencil crayons and begin my journey back home.
I walk next to a road, lined with an alley of trees. Halfway home there is a gap in the fence which I wiggle through, hopefully avoiding a coating of green dust. The soil is soft underfoot and if I look up the leaves overlap one-another like a green, tissue paper mosaic; like the “stained glass windows” we used to make when I was at school. Previous rains have made a beautiful setting, stunning. The soil more rich, the greens more vibrant, and the smell of the damp earth and fresh leaves is crisp in my nose. I pause and inhale, the weeks of tension fall away.
I still have work to do, an essay to write, an exhibition to advertise; but not now. Not yet. It can wait.
Xx