Very Close and Very Still

I love wildflowers.

I love accidental beauty.

There is something precious about seeing that beauty where no person intended.

I do love summer.

Summer is a teacher's respite from the crazy-ness of the semester. We need that down time. 

I know I need time to recharge, but it's not always comfortable. I struggle every year with the non-routine-ness of my summer days. 

I go from a school year of being surrounded by people each weekday to mainly hanging out alone during the day, near my children. The tribe of my closest friends is scattered, and they are all doing their own summer-things. I get a bit lonely without the day to day engagement of friends and colleagues who know me well.

During the school year, I have classes, committee meetings, workshops that fill my daytime. I do teach in the summer, but I spend very little time on campus. Although I am never bored, I have so much more...choice in the summer with my free time that it can be disconcerting.

Yesterday morning, Anthy asked me what "special thing" we were going to do that day. He was heartbroken and bitterly disappointed when I told him "nothing special."

From behind his bedroom door, I heard him proclaiming that he wanted "something special all the days!"

I understand that feeling. Every summer, I feel like I need all the days to be special. Every moment should be filled with either wild, ecstatic fun or deep, soul-healing peace. I have trouble just letting summer be.

And then I found these wildflowers...

and all I wanted to be was very close and very still with them. 

Each was beautiful and so...there...

They were covered in tiny bugs, and it was hot, and the grass was itchy, and I was all sticky and sweaty and buggy, but I didn't care about the any of those things right then because they were Real, in the Velveteen Rabbit kind of way.

I could be very close and very still and not worry about what I was or wasn't accomplishing or missing.

Sometimes I need to just sit with the discomfort created by the absence of my school busy-ness. 

Although I am tempted to fill the time-hole of my summer with more, there's a joy in being very close and very still with myself too...

I am enjoying going "to seed" and peeling away the layers of myself that are just for show.

I am not sure what's under there - it's a work in progress - but I'm sure it's Real.

And the discomfort may hurt a little, getting to those Real parts, but "When you are Real, you don't mind being hurt."