Just tell them you can't help it, you’re in the middle of harvest! – a comment from Ed, as I groan about a pile of tasks and too few hours to get them all done.
breakfast
And he's right. Harvest. That means picking, washing, sorting,
and storing. It takes as long (if not longer) to do this as it did to water flowers on hot hot
summer days (and it’s not as if that task is over and done with – we’re rolling into
a week of warm sunshine and the cosmos is already showing signs of distress).
next door farmer harvests melon, child in tow
But I’m not a farmer or even a home maker of the type who
can pause with life because there is a harvest. And when I think I have caught
up with what Ed has brought in, he’s there again, picking, picking...
Despite the time squeeze, I take a noon hour pause and go back to yoga
class. Out there by the prairie fields.
The meditative, stretched out peace doesn’t really spill much into the
rest of the day. I imagine church may be like this for some – you go, you listen to all that
good stuff about forgiving your neighbor and loving your enemy and then you step outside and you scream at your kid and curse your co-worker. Resolutions
have a way of fizzing out, as if someone punctured the balloon of good thoughts the minute you turn the other way. Pfffft! Gone.
But I do appreciate having a brief minute to indulge my inner peace. And mostly,
I love feeling a wide range of movements again. I was never a kid who could do
contortions and odd twists of the body, but I was nimble and sprite and it’s
nice to reach for those motions again. So I indulge in
that hour of yoga which means that I now have to stay up late and arise early
to meet my work goals for the day.
At least dinner is mean and lean: yesterday’s spaghetti and
shrimp sauce is fortified with some dozen more new tomatoes and garlic and all
that’s very easy and it makes use of some of the newly picked bruised tomatoes so in all – life is very wonderful.
