We celebrated the holiday by descending en masse with another family on the local elementary school playground. They happen to have a large field with set of picnic benches amid a stand of shade trees conveniently located near a jungle gym and a kickball field. In other words, a place ideally suited for picnics with children.
The weather was perfect. While it did get hot in the afternoon, it was nothing like the 105 degree heat we endured our first year when we selected the local park with no shade trees. To say Walter and Emma had a blast would be a moderate understatement. Emma dashed back and forth between playing with the kids closer to her age and the older kids (in which I include myself) who were playing a child-friendly game involving throwing a big rubber ball in the air and at one another. Walter...he just dashed back and forth for no reason. Both wore big grins and craved frequent hugs.
Richard slept through the entire thing in his carseat, and Terhi enjoyed sitting with him in the shade and watching everyone else cavort about in the sun. When you're a mother, the ability to sit unmolested and do nothing at all (except eat watermelon) is a delightful luxury. The kids needed amazingly little supervision, and even less rescuing.
In short, it was one of those singular moments in which you can feel the sun on your face, the breeze in your hair, and the delight of a body that does (mostly) what you ask of it, while the precious others in your life sporadically enter your orbit like beaming, savanna scented comets; circling, touching, connecting, and then zooming away again, giggling toward aphelion, leaving you solitary amid the grass, and yet indetectibly connected to everyone and everything at once.
Were I Douglas Spaulding from a Bradbury idyll I'd have suddenly realized I was Alive. What I realized, rather, was that I am very, very fortunate--blessed, even. Everything I really need in life was contained in a single schoolyard. And for a long, lazy, startlingly beautiful moment, nothing beyond it mattered.
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Wow. I cleaned, mowed, trimmed, and scrubbed.
Then I cut, glued, routed, sanded, drilled and admired the final drawer fronts in the window seat. Ahhhh... I love the smell of success. Watched the fireworks out the office window while putting the last screws in.
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