on the ground, sweet sound

For weeks now, the weather forecasts threatened rain. Almost each and every day the sun answered with warming glory amidst cloud gatherings and soft blue skies. We've been spending so much time outside, I don't even want to talk about the mountains of laundry we've made or the condition of my floors. Because it's far more fun to remember what it was like at the river beach just over a week ago, when we played on it's carpet, lush and green with its flowery flecks.

I am always amazed - and proud - at how much the babes' love being outside. 

They are only 3 and 5.  They're only starting to distinguish between the seasons with their whole bodies. 

Their wonder and awe at everything they see, touch, and smell is so potent. Excitable. Joyful. Spontaneous. Inspired. Celebratory. Comfortable. Free.

Their comfort is what enchants and I daresay, heals me most. Our days are so much more often filled with arguments and disagreements. As the kids get comfortable in their own skin, I am ever on a learning curve and react with hot-headed reflexes.  Even when my decision-making is sound, even when it seems that peace has been achieved in some way, I feel like the destroyer of all the harmony in the world.

With these photos I bring inside evidence of sweet sound: our laughter, rustling grass, dogs barking, bat connecting with a baseball for the very first time at the hand of the boy, the wife's coaching, the wife's cheers, the girl's pencil scratching in her notebook, the wind magnifying in aching silence the moments at which we are at the same time preoccupying ourselves with our surroundings. 

I hope these photos and this entry will help me remember what all this goodness sounds like, especially when all my memory hears the harsh in my tone, the arguments I instigate, and the increasing complexity of the dissent I must face. I need to be reminded that on many blessed occassions, I hear happiness too.