Right outside our front door stands a Japanese maple tree. I can see its branches from where I sit now, without craning my neck. When I sit out front, it makes a canopy that ends a few feet from where the steps to the house begin.


From both of these spots-my desk and the front steps, and also from certain vantage points in the kitchen-I can see and hear what is going on in the park. What this means is that I can be out there just a few seconds after I hear Anna crying, or the kids quarrelling, or if there's trouble between the neighborhood dogs, or the UPS truck comes barrelling down the road.

They are out there, all ages mixed up together. Playing (now) in the leaves, and giving the little ones red wagon rides, and hopping back and forth across the creek, and the big kids texting each other (from a distance of twenty feet. please, someone explain this to me, someday), and all of them running back and forth from park to house to house.

The thing is, I just can't go sit out in the park every day, even on a stellar fall day like today. I wish I could. I wish I were the person who could walk away from the kitchen, the laundry, the computer. But I get very antsy, if things aren't all in place by a certain hour.

You know that hour. When it all falls apart. And, if on top of everyone being hungry and dirty and just a little bit sketchy about how much homework needs doing, I still don't have dinner going and things in place, we're poised for disaster.

Because when all is said and done, and the kids are fed, clean, and finished with the day, I do not want my work to begin.

I want our night to start.

So, it's a hard choice, on these days when light is fleeting, but nights are chill and dark, to sacrifice time outside early, for calm and peace later.

But, I'll tell you, when we're sitting on that couch, feet to feet and finally at rest, I'll be ok with how things went, this afternoon.

More tomorrow. Thanks for reading.

tt