Amy J. Bennett

Extraordinary Faith for Everyday Life

Five Minute Friday: Ordinary

by

swingsatsunset

I zipped my jacket over my sleeveless, fluttering top and headed down the stairs to the swings.  “Come swing me, come swing me,” they said. It’s work but it’s work that has an end date and I want to soak it all in and do it well until then.

The little one barks as Scott emerges from the screen door with a bag of seed in his hands.  “It’s just Daddy, Bella,” I say.  The girls are loading their legs on top of one another across the swings and they tell me it’s called banana and I should push them like that so I do.  I watch as Scott fills the bird feeders he’s hung from the swing set.  The birds will empty them in a few days and we have no reason to feed them except it brings us joy to see them.

Lexi hops off her swing and runs to Bella, leaning down to talk to her like a  baby, “You’re so cute, yes you are, Bella,” she says as she ruffles her behind the ears.

I hear Emma starting to complain because no one is paying attention to her.  “Mommy, Daddy, let me swing you guys!”  I think of the squeezing plastic against my hips and insist that I don’t want pushed.

Scott and I sit in the glider around the fire pit where he’s just started the flames and we tell her to push us here.  She doesn’t think it’s a great idea so the girls climb in the trampoline and jump and jump and yell, “Daddy, look! Daddy, look!”

I watch Tucker follow Scott like a shadow across the lawn and see my ordinary evening.  Against the tide of the world’s cries, I long for the ordinary.  What did you do this evening, they’ll ask, and I’ll say nothing, but really mean everything.

 

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  7. The sweet simple things bring great joy. And just now, ordinary days flash across the screen of my memory-sliding, maple syrup tour, boat rides, camping and feeding chipmunks from our hands…and there are always new ones in the making. 🙂
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