Of Chores and The In-Between

It’s eight o’clock at night and bright as can be. The baby is asleep, it’s still over 90 degrees, and when my littlest man asks if I want to go on a garden walk, I say yes. I could be washing dishes. There’s always laundry to tend to. But I grab a couple of little hands and we head down paths well-worn.

I’m not that mom who celebrates saying yes. Much of the time I say no – not because I want to, but because I have to – and I don’t usually feel guilty about it. There are a lot of chores to do on our little homestead, and many of them can’t wait. These boys pitch in a lot – laundry, dishes, spreading mulch, pulling weeds, making beds, fetching tools for Daddy, learning to milk goats – and that sharing of the burden binds us in a way. They’re in better shape than I ever was – who has a six pack at five years old?! – and know how to do things at 6 & 8 that I’m still learning at 31.

I’m grateful for this work they do, both for the help they give me and the camaraderie it provides us, but also for the lessons it teaches them… and me. Those big chunks of work inevitably give way to small moments of rest and presence and big questions that leave me breathless and stuttering and ruminating for days.

You could work on chores all day every day, but at some points in the day – especially the hottest parts – you have to just be for a few moments. And this evening, like most days, allowed for a walk.

Most of these walks are down to the garden, not for weeding or planting or tending – a job done at a different time of day – but for looking and picking and enjoying. Being in the garden is one of my very favorite things, but being in the garden with these boys is an absolute treasure. They’ve planted the seeds, helped to carry the water, and when they discover real live melons hiding beneath the big green leaves, their gasp soon turns to running and shouting and terms like “huge” and “ginormous”. Yes, they’re only the size of a baseball, but still oh so exciting.

Their excitement is contagious and is a great reminder to me of how grateful I am to live here, in this place, with these people, and in this way of life. I just can’t imagine a better way to spend those moments stolen between chores than next to this little man watching melons grow and miracles happen.

And it makes these long, hot, dog days of summer all the more bearable.

The next morning I feed the baby long before the sun comes up and slip away for some reading and writing and coffee. When the sun is up, I sneak back in to retrieve Annabelle from among those that still sleep. When I exit the cabin door I look across the gaping hole that is our someday-house to see a trailer full of mulch, a wheelbarrow, and a waving, grinning boy wielding a pitch-fork. He shouts “I’ve done nine loads of mulch, Mama!” And here I thought he’d only let the chickens out and fed them when I wasn’t looking.

I wonder what we’ll find in the garden today…