Give Yourself a Little Gift
For the first time in a decade, I can stalk my children at lunchtime.
It might seem a little over the top, and even I little unhealthy, but I disagree. For the first time in fourteen years, I have a job where I can go for a walk at lunch. More over, my entire family is within an 7 minute walking radius. And guess what? We all get recess at the same time.
Say what you will, but I call that opportunity.
While getting in my 10,000 steps, I can wind around the school fence, and observe my children in the wild. My favourite is the separated kinder yard, where they are all confined to smaller space, right beside the sidewalk, so if I remember the colour of his t-shirt, I am guaranteed a Malcolm sighting. This is a little gift I give myself once a week.
This week I was spotted. Malcolm was walking toward the play structure, head down, studying how the white plastic ribbon in his hand moved in the wind. Just as I was approaching, he looked up. He stopped dead in his tracks. The biggest grin, full of joy and surprise, brightened his face.
I swear, under the high chatter of the school yard, I could hear a slow, cinematic orchestral swell. My life was playing out like a sun-drenched movie scene - the one where you fall on love with the characters and see how perfect their life is before someone gets kidnapped/cancer/shot. Except -- and this is the beauty of it -- I live in Utopia and things like that don't happen, so its the most boring, drama-free movie ever, scene after scene, day after day. And thats how long it feels like the moment lasts. Would it have gone on forever? Maybe, but instead I waved at him. He waved back, but at the end, he was still in awe over seeing me so he forgot to lower his hand.
As I turned to go, he was still dumbfounded, grinning, one hand in the air, the other with scrap plastic, in the sunbeams of the kinder yard.
That image is the gift I gave myself.
What can little token can you give yourself today?
It might seem a little over the top, and even I little unhealthy, but I disagree. For the first time in fourteen years, I have a job where I can go for a walk at lunch. More over, my entire family is within an 7 minute walking radius. And guess what? We all get recess at the same time.
Say what you will, but I call that opportunity.
While getting in my 10,000 steps, I can wind around the school fence, and observe my children in the wild. My favourite is the separated kinder yard, where they are all confined to smaller space, right beside the sidewalk, so if I remember the colour of his t-shirt, I am guaranteed a Malcolm sighting. This is a little gift I give myself once a week.
This week I was spotted. Malcolm was walking toward the play structure, head down, studying how the white plastic ribbon in his hand moved in the wind. Just as I was approaching, he looked up. He stopped dead in his tracks. The biggest grin, full of joy and surprise, brightened his face.
I swear, under the high chatter of the school yard, I could hear a slow, cinematic orchestral swell. My life was playing out like a sun-drenched movie scene - the one where you fall on love with the characters and see how perfect their life is before someone gets kidnapped/cancer/shot. Except -- and this is the beauty of it -- I live in Utopia and things like that don't happen, so its the most boring, drama-free movie ever, scene after scene, day after day. And thats how long it feels like the moment lasts. Would it have gone on forever? Maybe, but instead I waved at him. He waved back, but at the end, he was still in awe over seeing me so he forgot to lower his hand.
As I turned to go, he was still dumbfounded, grinning, one hand in the air, the other with scrap plastic, in the sunbeams of the kinder yard.
That image is the gift I gave myself.
What can little token can you give yourself today?
Comments
Post a Comment