A Golden Evening Experienced Through Real Eyes

I have to write this down, because it is a momentous day. Pippa learned how to correctly pronounce "girl." She has called it "GORE," ever since she learned how to talk. It is a bittersweet moment. We keep teasing her, "No, it's gore!"
"No, it's not, it's 'girl.'"
I tell her, "Who told you?! Who taught you about girls?!?"
Pippa, without missing a beat, responds, "God."

Silver was adorable personified today. She was trying to jump in the living room with Silas this morning. It was like a beautiful slow-motion indie video. In the filtered morning light in the brown room on the humble wooden floor, she danced. Up went one leg, bent knee out, up went her hands as she tried to use them for momentum. Then down. Then, deliberately, carefully but enthusiastically, UP! And softly back down.

This evening was unearthly beautiful. The air was saturated in golden light radiating from a sun setting in a splendor of heavenly marigolds. The clouds, a moody mixture of dark gray and orange, split here and there to reveal a brilliant crystal blue above. Everything seemed clearer, sharper, and unreal.

The light hit the maple and lit up all the leaves for a few minutes, turning it into a fantasy tree of quivering gold and green geometry. We lay there, on the picnic blanket, getting lost in the dizzy hugeness of the sky from this perspective. It was surprisingly cool outside. The breeze blew a steady, gentle freshness whole scene. At one point it started to rain. Silver drops coming down and blessing us like showers of jewels.

The children saw the first fireflies of the season, and chased them with awe and delight until well past the velvet dusk, naming them things like "Glow-Glow, but Glow for short," and Harold, and bringing them to me as I sat on the front step, drinking in all the visual poetry with every part of my being.

Silver, dressed in nothing but jeans, found Silas' brown John Deere baseball cap, put it on, and tottered over to me, saying, "hat, hat!"

For once, I let the camera lie still in the house. I needed the moment, I needed to lock in on it with my soul, experience it undiluted instead of through the eye of the shutter.

Yesterday, I also took my moment. I have been trying to slow down again and breathe moments of beauty as used to be so easy to me when I was younger and not so... responsible. Worrying about the bills isn't going to pay them. It seems helpful to worry about them, but it's really counterproductive. I still get to slow down, I still get to enjoy, I still get to be a presence-person. God said He would provide all our needs.

I had been to an exercise class after 3 or 4 days of feeling very dizzy. When I came home, Thomas had built a large fire with thick parts of the trees he's been cutting down in the yard. The fire pulsed and popped and sparked like some live alien trying to communicate a fierce message of love.

The children had roasted hot dogs and marshmallows already and were inside, but I stole a moment and slipped outside with four marshmallows, and squatted by the fire, my old familiar place, the smell bringing me back to 27 years ago, to a tiny adobe village in the Albarradas mountains of Mexico...

And tonight, as I sang "How He loves us, Oh," and played on the guitar, Silver sang with me, "Let it go!!"

Close enough.