Sensual Saturday

I’m always looking for ways to make this weekly routine different, unique, new.  It’s my inner restlessness, I think, always pushing me.  I probably look like a still and quiet person from the outside, since I like to laze around and think (and stare at computer screens), but most days my soul is not a still ocean reflecting the sky (as above) or babbling brook singing along it’s journey.  Instead there are turbulent rapids roiling just beyond the still eyes staring out the window.  Pushing me forward.

In truth, my life with Lucy changes so fast that I was tempted yesterday to dedicate the whole post to just her, documenting her rise into a new stage.  She’s no longer looking or acting like a baby.  She’s a toddler now.  She has taken her first steps and (as if it wasn’t before) life just got crazy.  Of course, she does this one week before we move apartments, at the precise moment when we are most preoccupied and distracted.

But my lifelines these days, even in the midst of moving and growing and this constant changing, are the hours of Thursday mornings and Saturday mornings, set aside for writing.  I’ve declared them guilt-free zones.

So today I’m:

Seeing:  The smiling faces of the baristas at J.J. Bean, local coffee shop extraordinaire.  Sparrows flying in the open windows of the café, hopping on tables and floor in search of crumbs.  Happy customers basking in the gleaming morning sun on the patio.  Comforting words from Julian: “Full preciously our lord keeps us when it seems to us that we are near forsaken and cast away for our sin and because we have deserved it.” (Chap 39)  Tiny new babies in strollers.  Seven hundred new words, that weren’t there when I started this morning.

Hearing:  The pound and whirr and hiss of the espresso machine.  The busy traffic along Main.  The hum of Saturday morning coffee dates.  Some great South American jazz (including a few songs with the accordion, for good measure), playing in the background.

Tasting:  Peppermint tea with just enough white sugar to give it sweetness.

Feeling:  The smooth home keys on my computer, after a week of typing mostly emails and Facebook posts on my phone’s tiny keyboard.

Smelling:  Sunshine on wet pavement.  Grass.  Mint. The stale coffee smell on my sweater and in my backpack as I leave to go home.