Priorities
Hi readers, this week we are pleased to present another piece - a short story - from Laura Dornon. Laura lives in Michigan with her husband and their three children. Her writing currently is largely influenced by her present occupation of full-time mothering and homemaking. Laura said the following about her pieces that she is sharing with the Mind Stayed series: “I'm trying to just write my thoughts and stop editing myself (like studying journalism taught me to do- be concise and fast and not overly descriptive)... but I'm trying to free myself from those constraints and just let myself think on paper.”
As Christa walked through the house, the voices swelled around her. Laughter from one corner, a fight from another. Someone else yelled out, “Mom, I need help with this! It’s stuck!” After pausing to help her oldest fix the stuck bit, she moved to the next immediate problem: laundry. It had been piled on the spare bed for at least a week now but in all the busy, she never felt able to get to it.
As she started to fold and sort some of the clean, now wrinkled laundry, a conflict between children arose and she needed to be referee, teacher and peace-maker.
The stove top was on to heat water for tonight’s dinner. Toys were all over the floor. As she walked past the living room, she purposefully turned her head away from the bathroom. It needed to be cleaned and she knew it.
When things got this busy, everything felt like a gust of wind swirling around her, filling her ears. Her heart rate sped up but she felt like everything was slowing down. Everyone needed something all at the same time and being pulled in so many directions felt like reaching out to grab a falling priceless something before it shattered.
She bustled through the evening, half-doing all the basic necessary tasks, although nothing felt like it was fully finished to her. When her husband came home, they banded together to work to feed the children dinner and pile them all in the car.
They drove away from the realness of real life and after turning around to turn off the stove and close a window that was left open, they were out on the road.
It was a noisy drive to the small wooded area that was their destination. One child was upset because someone’s foot was on their side. Someone forgot their favorite bunny. No one could agree on the radio station, so they turned it off. They got out and spread their blankets on the grass, they waited. Slowly the kids started to quiet and get a little sleepy as the sun finished going behind the clouds.
As dusk settled in, the first pinpricks of that small glow began to show. The children truly hushed now and a quiet reverence fell over the family.
Christa breathed in slowly as the fireflies came out and began to blink their light. The oohs and ahhs from the kids quieted into cuddles as they leaned in to watch. Christa leaned her head back to breathe a sigh of relief as the stillness of the evening and the beauty of the trees and silence of nighttime noises took over. For just a moment, all the things left undone, all the deadlines missed, all the lessons taught wrong were sand running through her fingers. She looked around her at the small family huddled close as they watched the fireflies blink on and off into the night. Tomorrow it would be back to the busyness of everyday, but for now, Christa felt the weight of it all leave her shoulders.
Thanks for reading the Mind Stayed series! We hope you have enjoyed this story. Come back on Wednesday evening for a discussion about this story, and then again on Friday evening for a quiz and the author’s insights.
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