The Present -- yet another lesson

Yesterday, Silas stayed home from school with pink eye, so the three of us went to my favorite beach. Rain stained the horizon in vertical rays and the clouds to the north loomed deep purple. The entire beach at high tide was covered with debris -- scraps of kelp, bamboo, sticks, trash -- and where we played a little stream cut across the beach to the ocean. The kids sloshed in the muddy sand, slid down edge of the bank, made fishing poles from long pieces of bamboo with wads of kelp "whales" hanging off the end. I tried to run around as much as they did to stay warm. After a while, though, the wind shifted and blew cold through our clothes. I felt myself grow antsy. Immediately I felt distracted and a little impatient, and my mind began to climb through the rest of the day ahead. At one point I said, "Eden, you have dance today!" -- some indirect attempt to turn her attention from the beach, back to the world at the top of the hill where there was heat. And without turning around, as she bent to pick up another handful of sticks she said, "But right now we are throwing things into the water!!!!"

And so you are, little one, and so you are.