“Summertime . . . . and the livin’ is easy . . . ”
Argh!!! Who are we kidding? Summer has become just as crazy as the rest of the year. We dream of tomato sandwiches and don’t get to the farmers’ market to get the tomatoes. Too much time is spent in hot, steamy cars. And trying to get the kids to swim team, tutoring, day camp, sleep away camp . . .
This time it’s me in a state of wazi-wazi (see earlier posts if this is a new concept). There is so much to do to get the school ready to open and it’s not all fun stuff like interviewing students and creating curriculum. Sometimes it’s dealing with governmental agencies who work within their own time frame. Sometimes it’s talking about septic tanks. It’s trying to raise money so we can take all the kids who want to come. Yep, wazi-wazi.
I was at an end-of-the-year church youth group recently. It was held at a park where lots of us used to take our toddlers. A favorite game of ours back then was Pooh-sti
cks. Have you ever played? It’s a game from Winnie-the-Pooh that involves two or more players dropping a stick off one side of a small bridge and seeing whose stick comes out first on the other side. It’s not a fast-moving game, but one that allows time for philosophical reflection, musings, and small talk. It’s not for the fiercely competitive, although a world championship is apparently held yearly. It’s slow and it makes you think the livin’ is easy.
As I was eating my hot dog and potato salad and brownie at this picnic, I realized many of the teens were down on the footbridge . . . . playing Pooh-sticks. The basketball and Frisbees sat unused. The kids were there well over an hour, playing and talking and laughing.
One can’t play Pooh-sticks and be in a state of wazi-wazi. This summer, take some time to do the things that slow you and calm you and hold you steady until your sphere can catch up with you. You need that time and your children certainly do. Things happen in their time whether we are frantic or not. But if we will slow down, we can watch them unfold.
Have your stick ready? Drop!
