into the mist-ic

It was a cool, rainy day all day yesterday, but as the sun started to set, it was only misting out, and so I cajoled the family into taking a walk with me. Number One Son agreed to go but then got a better offer to go to a friend's house, so he apologetically scooted out. Before he left, though, he sidled up to me, and being the sensitive young

man he is, asked me if he had made me feel sad by not going on the walk. I told him that I'm happy that he has such good friends and I know that when I was 18 I would've always skipped out to be with my friends. I said to him, "I don't think you'll understand this until you have kids, but it's sometimes sad for a parent to know that her kid would really rather be somewhere else, while at the same time it's normal and good. I know you are not a little boy anymore, but I still have the experience of that little boy in my memory, in my heart, in my very bones. So, yes, I do get a little sad sometimes." He reminded me that he is living at home next year for his first year of college. Yes, I know that. And it's not all a bed of roses living with a headstrong 18 year old. But still. There are some moments I miss experiencing with him, and this misty Spring evening walk felt like one of them. At eighteen and a half, he is such a man in some ways. But when I see his smile, a lock of hair that always curls a certain way, the tiny mole on his chin, his big expressive eyes, I see my little boy as he has always been.

But Husband and Number Two Son gave into my plea, son preferring to scoot along beside us on his bike. And it was amazing out. The grass is lush and green (everywhere, that is, except on our property where our pesticide-free yard is still a bit sparse--left to it's own devices, our yard is constantly trying to return to the mix of woodland grasses and weeds, wild olive, and redbud shoots it was before we were there). The crab apples are all bloom and perfume, while the Bradford pears are now in leaf, their recent finished blooms covering the sidewalks like a dusting of snow. The bass and grass carp were active in the small ponds up the road, and our buddy the muskrat was taking his evening swim. I see him almost every time I walk there, and I always envy him his quiet, solo swim in a placid pond at twilight. I briefly reconsider letting Husband buy the backhoe he's been going on about, and letting him dig a pond at the bottom of our property so that I can be a muskrat on summer evenings at twilight.

The walk back was even more magical as a foggy mist settled into the low spots on our road and the spring peepers went into full song. Cardinals and other song birds flashed and twittered in the shrubby undergrowth that overtakes all the unkept edges where our dead-end road fades into deeper woods. A red-wing blackbird sang from a marshy area. It was hard for me to believe my luck at being alive on this damp, deeply green-scented evening. What luck to live on my small acre and a half of shed, garden, woodpile, pine row, fallen tree, bird-filled thicket, cozy house, screened porch. Even through the ups and downs of life with other humans and work and worry, I find much peace here, and being outside at twilight presses that peace into my very being.