Cheers To Home

Sometimes I surprise even myself.

For a person as driven as I am, who always has her hands in a project, a manuscript, or an event, it fascinates me how much I love the summer slows.

The every day rhythm of having my husband home, of gliding with our little family across our region’s countryside lakes, watching the wind skim through my boys’ hair.

The two and three day stretches where my brothers and their families assemble here, where morning cinnamon rolls wake us up and ribs greet us after a day of boat-jumping.

The night time quiet when the kids–some of them, at different times–are roughly asleep and we play cards on the tall kitchen table until people one by one bow out in evening exhaustion.

The unrushed dips in and out of various cities, the kind that have roomy agendas with space to connect with old friends or to take in restaurants where they deliver a four year old’s grilled cheese via toy train.

I love to be engaged in a good vision.

I love to travel.

But I also love, flat out indulge in, being home.

And so I preserve my days, the big chunks of them, to “be” home. I wrangle a chai out of the kitchen and sink into a couch to send emails and post things for my various clients before the morning sun wakes my boys. And when their little feet pound about the living room and their little handprints smush themselves upon our doors and windows, I blog a little less, saving up my own musings for the fall, using the little bits of space here for sharing more about friends and their writing.

And I go out on the 1992 pontoon boat with red pleather seats. On the kayaks. To pick flowers. To indulge in sweet summer home life in ways that will not drive nearly the maximum traffic to my blog or the maximum readers to my books.

But I get the satisfaction of knowing I’m not producing things for the sake of producing things. I get the routines of gratitude, of living–really living–and collecting a whole new range of experiences that will inspire the next season of projects when I’m ready.

Cheers to your projects, friends, but also, cheers to home.