I just finished reading A Homemade Life and for the first time in a very long time, I cried at the end. Not because it was sad but because it was so honest and true. This is not one of those dredge up the horrid past memoirs but one about the ordinary moments in life. I have also been reading Ruth’s post this week about storytelling and writing and capturing the ordinary moments. I wonder if it isn’t easier to do this when you have small children around? I know that during the school year, I am always grabbing up those ordinary moments in the classrooms, the bits of conversation between children, the art, the block structure that tells me so much about who that child is.
When I began scrap-booking (about 11 years ago) I got caught up in making every page a celebration. It was fun at the beginning but it is an exhausting task to keep up. A few years ago, I began a smaller scrapbook using those odd photos of ordinary moments. Why did I stop? Something to think about.
Here is an ordinary moment. We walk on the trail, nearly every day. I am usually a bit behind, partly because I am trying to take care of my knees but also because I get distracted by the water and the wildlife. We walk by this fence daily and each day, I find my head turning toward the patterns the fence makes on the trail. I imagine that most people just power past this fence, focused on the trail ahead or trying to stay out of the way of the riders coming and going. It is just a chain link fence after all. Ordinary. But I remember those days when we couldn’t get this far on our walks. His back was healing and we had to turn around about half a mile sooner. Then getting to this bridge was the triumph and for a time it became our turn around point. But the day came when we began crossing the bridge, turning around about half a mile up the trail and it was then that I saw the patterns. So an ordinary fence; a daily moment; not a celebration but certainly a marker.
lining up my words 