Day 18 Perspective

 


Last night we all slept in a tent in the garden. Gray and Eva had made a very cozy bed on boogie boards under the palm tree and we pitched a tent next door. Gray was the first to buckle and join us in the tent and then Eva joined us when a frog jumped on her face. 

I'm not going to lie, it wasn't my best night's sleep. My mattress options were two ill shaped couch cushions pushed together (and they so happened to be on a slight slope), or our cheap camping mattress that is so synthetic that one just slides off it. 

I went for the camping mattress. Day two after a gym workout hit somewhere at 1.00 in the morning coinciding with Eva giving up her fight against gravity and rolling down from the couch cushions onto me and the kak camping mattress. 

Judging by the contented snores and sighs of the rest of my adventurers it appears to have been a good night for everyone else. 

This morning I woke with the ubiquitous dew halo on my head from the condensation on the tent and I had two small rabbits fighting for a spot next to me. When I stood up, crouched like an old crone due to tent height volume, the full impact of my gym workout and insufficient mattress made itself known. 

I stumbled out of the tent clutching all my linen, I don't do sleeping bags, and took a cursory glance at the morning. 

It was truly magnificent. Our home has undoubtedly one of the best views in the world and was resplendent in the early gold of the morning. Even the slightly different perspective from our camping spot, with the fresh morning air weaving it's way through the palm tree above us, was enough for me to feel like I had truly done something different. The sensory experience was enough to adjust my perception of my home and my view and my spirit. 

Walking back up to the house I felt the slightest shift in my approach to the day, a little reset. Sometimes we don't have to travel far to see the world through fresh eyes. A new perspective is often all we need to stumble through in order to discover that exciting experiences don't have to be far away. Sometimes they're right under our noses. 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Voice of Scout

Image
  As a teacher one hopes to create that one iconic moment for students where academia becomes magic. My moment as a student happened when my ethereal English teacher, Moira Lovell, began reading 'To Kill A Mockingbird' to our Grade 10 class. If one is familiar with the book one knows that the opening pages are somewhat long in the tooth. Lots of sociopolitical context. The introduction is one which will make a 16 year old fresh from having eaten lunch a little heavy lidded.  Enter Scout. The moment Mrs Lovell changed her perfect elocution and adult tone to the gritty, fiesty accent of a little girl from Maycomb County, Alabama I believed that anything was possible in a classroom. The entire class was transfixed. Similar to how I'm sure the generation of radio listeners felt at the lead up to the next Goon Show, or War of the Worlds, our English lessons became much anticipated events. We would sit enraptured for an entire lesson as the voice of Moira Lovell, an English teach...
Read more

Its beginning to look a lot like a family reunion...

Image
Inspired by various families I have witnessed while on holiday... The family chat group that Kevin begrudgingly belonges to exploded sometime in February when one of his in-laws suggested that they all celebrate the coming Christmas together at a hotel. It would coincide perfectly with his mother in law's 70th birthday. Everyone on the chat group, apart from Kevin, agreed that they could think of no better way to get into the Christmas spirit than to spend seven solid days in each other's company, including nine children all under the age of 10. Since then the chat group has been riddled with extreme holiday expectations and awkward reminders to pay for accommodation. Kevin spent the next 9 and a half months in mild therapy with his padel partner, Brian. Their final post game beer, sometime at the beginning of December, ended in a bracing hug with Brian reminding Kevin that he is only a phone call away if things get too much.  It is now two days into the seven day Christmas ext...
Read more

The Stuff That Gets Left Behind

Image
  This is not a political blog post, its a human one.  Yesterday I stood surveying the frugal contents of a human being's life. Contents hastily packed and cling wrapped and dropped off for safe keeping while that person runs for their life.  A person who has worked for over a decade in this country. A person who has contributed to the fabric of our society.  A person who, during lockdown, took in a mother and her new born baby because the baby's father had abandoned them. A person whose humble two room dwelling thus became the home for five people. A person who stretched her simple salary because she could not watch a mother and her child be homeless.  I can tell you countless other stories about this human being and her generosity of spirit. How with very little she still always answers the call of God to help those around her. How she is the stalwart of her community because she is a woman who can be trusted, and a woman with a heart for all God's people....
Read more