Slow Day

Growing up on the East Coast, sometimes in the winter it would snow so much they’d close school for a snow day. One year there was what I remember as a snow month, or maybe more than a month. The streets were too dangerous to navigate so parents couldn’t get the kids to school and teachers and administrators couldn’t come in. Cars stayed parked, there was no driving allowed. We kids bundled up in snowsuits to play in the street all day. My mom pulled me on a sled to the grocery store and had to climb out of a third story window to shovel off the roof. It was exciting. We didn’t have to go anywhere or buy a bunch of stuff, we just had a lot of people hanging out together dealing with the snow.

In California we don’t get snow days. But yesterday I gave myself a slow day. I spent most of the day in the garden turning soil, which is something I never thought I would do, or be into doing. I mixed in the soil booster, which is mostly chicken poop, and crumbled the dirt clods with my hands until the soil and booster mixture became a fluffy fertile bed to receive the baby plants we bought.

At times I was focused on the feel of the dirt, the pulling of the old roots and other non-dirt matter from the beds, the creating a happy growing environment. At other times I was just chatting on the phone, catching up with friends. Fanny pack with phone zipped in it plus headset = gardening with company.

I’m not seven years old in a city shut down by snow, but somehow digging in the dirt while connecting with my peeps telephonically gave me that same feeling of time slowing down, getting bigger. Like the seconds were so ripe and juicy I could taste them. And they were good.