rocking chairs and front porches

my last entry in this particular blog?...oh that would be january.  january to june.  seems to be the story and pace of our lives.  i have to wonder, have i had no opportunity to be still in these past six months or so.  it seems not.  but we all know that is just not true.  i have rested. i have relaxed.  i have slept.  and i have even sat and stared at the wall...well...maybe not the wall.  but i cannot pretend that i have been completely void of a few extra minutes.  it is also clear that i am not usually at a loss for words.  there has been plenty to say.  plenty of which to write.   i have composed countless blog posts in my head.  i have had no shortage of topics, thoughts and ideas.  but... perhaps a more honest perspective is i have been missing some motivation.  maybe missing the inclination.  i know there will be a time in life where i will have some extra hours which stretch out ahead of me.  there will be some unaccounted for minutes in my day where no one needs a bath or tissue or a meal.   at least i think there will be a time like this.  truth be told...i am Counting On It.

 lately i have  had a strange attraction to front porches and rockers.  i haven't met a rocker resting on a front porch that i haven't liked.  i find them all inviting...all appealing...even friendly.  i cannot walk near a porch without feeling an extreme sense of beckoning. these rockers and porches are a tiny taste of a simpler, gentler, slower dance.  in the midst of my middle-aged rush, i long for those words.  those ideas.  i fully embrace my days of chasing children and containing chaos, but i have a spirit which requires dreams.  it requires time to dream.  it requires a place to dream.  as a mother of many, i have found it more than challenging to dream in my day to day. in fact, i have found it very challenging to even think.  i have become the mother who, in desperation, tells her children, "stop, and let me think!"  at the age of 22,  i would have bet money on me never muttering such an awful phrase.  but now, i must.   i am so seldom idle.   and idle can be so very good.  in fact, idle is necessary.  perhaps i'll feel differently when my hair is gray and my nest is empty.  perhaps then i will become more cautious...more skeptical...more wary.  i might resist the urge to sit and rock for a while. knowing that the "while" could be too long.  but right now...oh  my.  i find rockers and porches better than ice cream on a summer evening.   i am charmed with the thought of a quiet front porch.  i am entranced with the feeling of an evening breeze and the sound of distant crickets.  i have even found myself photographing porches and rockers.  i study angles and colors and lighting as if i was commissioned on some great work of art...or at least paid for a magazine spread.  neither of which is remotely true. but nonetheless, i consider carefully each shot.   someday i will have a photograph of me rocking gently in one of those chairs.  someday.  someday i will sit and  i will write and i will write and i will write....or i will stare at the sea or the sky or even at that wall.  and i will be still.