September and October have been wild for us. We launched into a new year of homeschooling. We traveled to Wyoming with friends. We hosted a houseful of guests for a conference. I prepared a talk, edited and reworked about a thousand pages of fiction, and kept up a constant stream of communication with my new publisher about covers, bios, and book release details.
I’m not ungrateful. These have all been wonderful experiences, things I’ve looked forward to, things I’ve prayed for. And there’s something thrilling about stepping out of the ordinary into new challenges and bustling seasons of life. But when the last car pulls away and the fridge is restocked and the clothes are washed and folded, I find myself longing for the return to the mundane. These hectic, unusual days have touched the ordinary with a special magic. Or maybe the magic was there all along.
I wake up to a quiet house and hurry into the office to exercise. I spread the mat on the floor, stretch the kinks from my muscles, and listen to a sermon on courage. At this hour of morning, the sky is a pale, uniform blue, and the rest of the world is black. I listen to words of truth as the sun rises and the leaves are recast in green and gold.
I make toast and set the gummy bear vitamins on the counter. The kids bound from their room in their long-sleeved pajamas and Lorelei tells me how the princesses kept her up last night. Silas has plans for the day. He’s going to build something new with his K’Nex. A speedboat this time.
The morning’s schoolwork is written on the dry erase board. We start with prayer and a math lesson. Later on, we’ll divide words into syllables. Lorelei will sit with us at the table and work on her schoolbooks. She’s finished about a dozen Pre-K workbooks so far this year. I smile as she dives into a new one with a fat pink marker. I’ll need to buy some more.
Soon, we’ll take a break, have a snack, read a few books, and play. I’ll cut carrot sticks and apple slices and stack them beside cheese sticks and salty crackers, and we’ll sit out on the porch and eat lunch. The kids will ride their bikes and run up and down the hill to the road. Lorelei will lay down for a nap around 2 o’clock, and I’ll get some work done, or read a bit, or start on dinner while Silas plays with airplanes and Hot Wheels.
Jon’s workday will end, and we’ll have dinner together. We’ll clear the dishes and clean up toys and take a walk at Radnor Lake, where the turtles stretch their scaly toes to catch the last rays of sun while the blue heron stands in the shallows, waiting for dinner to swim by.
We’ll go through our bath and bedtime routines: toothbrushes and pajamas and stories and songs. We’ll kiss the kids and tuck them in and spend a couple of hours together before we fall into bed.
And tomorrow we’ll start all over again. Just a regular day. Not one word of it will be recorded, none of it used for sales or promotions. There won’t be any parties or big events, and we won’t see the sun rise over the snow-capped peaks of the Tetons. But it will be perfect, every minute. Absolutely ordinary, and absolutely divine.
Photo courtesy of Carey Pace (www.careypace.com)
She never saw any of this coming.
She also had no idea of becoming either a mother or a writer, yet here she is, living in Nashville with a husband and two kids and three published books to her name. She ponders the humor of God and the strange adventure of living while she drinks kombucha on the porch, or plans new homeschool units, or reads everything from Emily Bronte to Dave Barry to Betty MacDonald.
You can find her books and an occasional poem or some such at www.helenasorensen.com.
- The Longer You Look - April 26, 2021
- So Tall Within - March 31, 2021
- Three Cheers for Frances! - January 20, 2021
What, no tantrums, sulking, or sass in your ordinary days? Magic indeed!
…I kid, I kid. Thank you for this lovely call to thankfulness. Complaining is easy, but this is the good stuff.
James, I admit that thought crossed my mind, too 🙂 .
Loren and James, you both know better. For reference, please see “A Slave in My Own Kingdom,” “All That I Have Lost Along the Way,” “The Golden Path of Perfect Parenting,” “Naps,” and every other thing I’ve ever written for Story Warren. 😉
True enough, Helena. We’re definitely all walking this road together. I think I’m slightly testy right now because I’m feeling limited by our current space and I know I need to reach out for beauty…and I’m resisting the effort. Love your spirit and your writing.
Love this, Helena. I start to crave the beautiful ordinary when we’ve been so busy. Just a regular ol’ day sounds just about perfect.
I love your ordinary day…. We had a quiet one today as we regroup from a busy few weeks, and it is good. Tomorrow will be back to the routine and I need to look for beauty, because there are ways to find it, it’s just different beauty than yours.
I understand. You can blame the extreme specifics of this post on Jonathan Rogers, who assures us that “the minute is the path to the mythic/universal.”
He’s good at proving that point 🙂 .
Yes, indeed.
I love this! The ordinary divine indeed! But I must encourage you to record some of your ordinary moments. Just write down a few things in your ordinary day that you thank God for. Later, when you are in a new season of life with your family, reviewing what you’ve written down now will help you recall God’s goodness in your life. You will see ways He has cared for you, provided for you, comforted you, strengthened you, encouraged you, healed you and equipped you. You see how He has brought your family through trials and sorrows, and you’ll remember joyous moments you would forget otherwise. https://starlightwriter.wordpress.com/2015/08/28/let-this-be-written/
Yes. Every once in a while you get one of those idyllic days…nothing profound, just daily goodness. It makes up for a whole lot of the other days that aren’t quite so idyllic, though even in those days, there are usually a handful of beautiful moments. This afternoon, for instance, I went for a walk and saw the Sound scarfed by low clouds and the sun striking the cliffs on an island across the channel. It helped me come home and face all that I had to face.
Yes! I live in a town in the mountains where tourists come in droves all summer long, and it’s wonderful and zany and fun–and exhausting. When September rolls around and the vacationers roll out, we all stay in pajamas and sit in front of the fire doing not much, happy to be back in the ordinary again.
This sounds awesome. I’M COMING OVER.