First day of First Grade

Six Hours. To myself. Every schoolday 'til summer rolls over us again.

Today it looks like summer, but it smells like fall. There is a crisp coolness in the air, hanging like a thin veil of change over everything I do, everything I contemplate doing.

Yet, here I sit. Doing nothing really. Just soaking up the time. The quiet. The first moments I've been waiting to celebrate.

My life has spun around and around my son for years. I suppose I can't expect it to spin on my terms all at once. I suspect it will return to a pace I vaguely recall; one my introverted self naturally responds to.

Now the hours stretch before me like a prologue waiting to be written. What will I make of my life now that I have a chunk of it back?

Looking back yields a blurry flurry of activity and noise and endless to-dos.

It is my time. To rest. To do. To be. To work. To stretch out and out until I feel the outer reaches of myself again.

To give God time to fill the inner reaches again.

I am looking forward to being repaired, renewed, refilled, remade.

And, I am excited for my boy. Excited that we survived. That he thrived, in spite of me at times. And that with our nudging and encouragment, he is out there. On his own.

On his way to finding the inner and outer reaches of his own self, too.