It's Taken Fifteen Years and a Doodle Dog For This Girl to Take a Break

Today, for the first time in years—and I mean years—I sat outside on the grass and just. . . sat.

I was alone--solo--me and no other person.   I sat still and enjoyed the fuzzy fluff of new pup who had just fallen asleep on my lap.

No meditating or intentional time set aside for prayer or quiet contemplation.  I was not nursing a baby.  I had no newspaper, no book club read, and no Reading Teacher issue to sift through.  No catalogs or PTA magazine, no preschool monthly notes.  No MOMS Club newsletter, no mail-reading, letter-writing, or blog post composing.  No Facebook reading, Tweeting, or texting.   

I just sat.  With a puppy on my lap.  I just sat.

My kids were out with my husband, and there wasn’t a neighbor in sight.

And as I sat in the middle of my completely un-lush back yard, near overturned big wheels and a dirty sand and water table, near flowers that needed watering and a garden that screamed for weeding, I let it all go.   I didn’t get up to right the bike, to gather the balls, to grab Matchbox cars before they jammed our lawnmower.  I ignored the watercolors on the table that needed to be closed and the Polly Pockets stuck in the cracks of the porch. 

I chased away the guilt of not taking our family to the Cherry Blossom Festival, to see the trees that were—as I sat only thirty minutes away from their infinite beauty—in their peak.   I pretended that we didn’t promise our kids a ride to the city on the Metro and hoped that their quick jaunt to the park with their dad would suffice.  

I vaguely recalled the last time I just sat, doing nothing but contemplating life while feeling a fuzzy heartbeat on my lap.  It was one afternoon in my late teens, lounging on my parents’ porch between trips home from college, wearing a tear-stained face and a broken heart, next to the greatest dog that ever lived. It seemed like a lifetime ago.  In some ways, it was. 

As I sat on this sunny spring-break afternoon, I wondered what kind of adventures our new pooch would see our family through, here in our little life in the suburbs of the Nation's Capital.  I thought about how much had changed in my life in the fifteen--yes, fifteen!--years since the last time I sat still, doing absolutely nothing. I thought about how grateful I was for my husband, our babies, our home, and this day's flowers and warm breeze; I felt thankful for our health, our friends, and our family. 

And you better believe that I said a quick prayer of thanks for our tiny pup; after all, it was this little guy who finally gave us--me--a reason to slow down a bit and to take it all in.

This is an original DC Metro Moms post.

At teachmama, Amy M. mostly shares the skinny on the ways she spends time with her three young children, but she's also thrown in a few pictures of her doodle dog, too, just because right now the whole family's a little doodle-dog dizzy.