On Sleepwalking

Most of the time, I am very present in my life.  I am there for my husband and my kids and my friends.  I appreciate the things I have and the things I can do.  I feel incredibly blessed to be who I am and where I am in the time I have here on earth.  Most of the time, I pay attention. 

But.  And it's a big "but".  There are times when I can go days or even weeks without really noticing the things that are going on around me.  I am making lunches and walking through my neighborhood and having dinner with friends and helping my kids with their homework without ever really paying attention to lunches and my neighborhood and dinner with friends and my kids with their homework. 

This past Friday, we packed the kids up as soon as they all got home from school and drove just an hour north to camp in a state park on a small lake.  We don't usually camp once the kids are back in school, but we had a free weekend and decided to go for it. 

That's how I got to wake up at 7:30 Saturday morning, step outside the door of the camper, and see this:

The lake, with steam rising off the top, the sun orange in the sky and, though I didn't snap the photo in time, two colorful hot air balloons floating off into the blue distance.  And I noticed.  I noticed the way the sun was warm on my face but the breeze was cold on my arms.  I noticed the way the seagulls were soaring over the lake and their reflection was on the water.  I saw the clouds and the ducks and the leaves on the trees.  I noticed.

And the further into the weekend we got, the more I noticed, and the more I thought.  My sweet A. catching his biggest fish ever, a large-mouth bass. 

The sight of my three adventurous kids hiking in front of me on the trail.

A beautiful flower that I don't know the name of, but that was the only flower growing in a patch of green, some of which was Poison Ivy.

A still, quiet lake and the sounds around it:  tree frogs and bird calls and my children laughing with each other.

My oldest son, E., walking out onto this fallen log, pushing the envelope as usual and loving every second of it.  This could be our last camping trip with E., as next summer he'll be working and getting ready for college and who knows what else and might not have time to go camping with his family. 

And conversations around the campfire, with the fire hot on my face but my arms and legs trembling from the cold.  Talking about our favorite meals ever and funny jokes we've heard and how the Halloween Ghost Peeps we roasted over the fire tasted a little like Frosted Flakes.  And the laughter.  Always, the laughter.

I am not the kind of mom whose life is made up of only my children, all the time.  I love them, and I enjoy them, but we are meant to raise them to be independent and to be able to, when the time is right, go off on their own.  I think that D. and I will do fine someday when our children are grown and living their lives.  I will not miss making school lunches or helping with homework or breaking up fights every single morning over breakfast.

But this.  The laughing and the hiking and the conversations across a campfire.  These are the things I will miss.  That's why on weekends like these, I take special care not to sleepwalk through the days.  Instead, I notice.