The Extraordinary Ordinary Everyday Moments

I had to go to a writing meeting tonight so I was not able to eat dinner with the family, but I did not want to miss what was happening at home. I did not want to miss the ordinary extraordinary.
Rachel’s friend had come over and I had initially thought they were going to go out, but instead they sat at our island in our kitchen and I offered that they eat dinner with us and they said yes, and I wanted the meal to be nice and my home to be a warm place for my children and their friends and I wanted to be a part of this very every day moment.
At the time I offered to have my daughter and her friend eat dinner with us, I had not even made dinner but then it looked like they were going to just stay at our house and so I offered to make dinner and I wanted it to be nice and I wanted to sit on our deck covered with trees and listen to the creek that is next to the deck and participate in the conversation of everyday life.
I want my home to be a safe and comfortable haven for my entire family and I felt like things were not in order enough, so I quickly cleaned up and made a salad and had Ryan help clean up and I got chicken out to barbeque and I took the husks off of the corn on the cob ready to boil and I cleaned off the table on the deck so it would be nice and clean and I just wanted to stay…but I did not. I went to my meeting.
And hurried back home.
I told my friend Janice about this blog I wanted to write, about wanting to be with my children for the ordinary every day moments of life, about the importance of creating a home that our children want to be in. A place that is not rushed, a place where our children can talk about life and God and faith and worries and questions and whatever comes to their minds. A place where our children can share their thoughts and dreams and frienships and everyday life. A place where our children can laugh and be silly and be themselves and in our home there is a lot of craziness.

It is not about quality time only but it is about time. Having the time. Taking the time. About creating a safe place, a place of warmth, that our children can bring their friends home to, a place where they feel comfortable. And Janice said that is exactly what is important to her, that is exactly what she has tried to provide for her family these 20 years as a stay home mom.
Two days ago, I walked to Sourdough Willy’s with my oldest son 17 and my youngest son 6 and we got cherries which are amazing this time of year and we got sticky buns and danishes, apricot and cream cheese and it felt good to walk together in our neighborhood, it was just a moment, but one that I treasure and I try to tell my kids to treasure.
Last night we ate our dinner on the deck again. It has been amazing summer evenings and we had corn on the cob and sausages and spinach salad and the twins are at Boy Scout camp right now so there are only 3 kids at home. And I wanted to savor every moment. The laughter, the discussion, the conversation. Before the dinner, Rachel and Augustin had been putting dried mint leaves into a bottle together in our kitchen/ It was an everyday moment they were sharing. Rachel was going to do this alone after she had been drying the mint leaves from our yard but Augustin asked if he could help. So they did the project together.

And a day before the two of them had planted herbs in a planter. Rachel works with someone at the county who plants his own garden and she wanted to do some of that as well. She had done some last year.

I went to get my camera to capture some of these everyday ordinary moments of an everyday summer day.

That feels extraordinary.

The poet Billy Collins

A while ago I discovered the poet Billy Collins, who, in 2001, was named the United States U.S. Poet Laureate. He will be one of the four plenary speakers at the Christian Scholars' Conference 2009, called "The Power of Narrative" which isJune 25-27, 2009 at Lipscomb University

Collins' poetry makes the ordinary extraordinary. It makes real life magical. It shows the wonder of the day to day every day.

Here is a poem of his called Flock:

Flock By Billy Collins
It has been calculated that each copy of the Gutenburg Bible
required the skins of 300 sheep.

I can see them
squeezed into the holding pen
behind the stone building
where the printing press is housed.

All of them squirming around
to find a little room
and looking so much alike
it would be nearly impossible to count them.

And there is no telling which one of them
will carry the news
that the Lord is a Shepherd,
one of the few things
they already know.

and here's another:

Invention By Billy Collins

Tonight the moon is a cracker,
with a bite out of it
floating in the night,

and in a week or so
according to the calendar
it will probably look

like a silver football,
and nine, maybe ten days ago
it reminded me of a thin bright claw.

But eventually --
by the end of the month,
I reckon --

it will waste away
to nothing,
nothing but stars in the sky,

and I will have a few nights
to myself,
a little time to rest my jittery pen.