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mara williams
on May 21 2013 - 06:00 AM
Summer break has this mom on a house upkeep war path.
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The big picture: out of the corner of my eye, I see the large limb on my tree, touching the ground. I walk over to survey the situation and see that the tree has broken in half-split in two.
Ugh! More yard work to be done in a project that is already more than I want to deal with.
Haven’t I noticed that branch was a little lower than I remembered? Sure, but from my kitchen window it didn’t appear to be laying on the ground. With the dry weather, we haven’t had to mow the grass and I don’t hang out much in this part of the yard. A harder look at the damage reveals that more of the tree is damaged. It looks like I will need chainsaw and a strong guy to help me cut down the decay.
I am overwhelmed. The big picture renders me helpless, another chore in the never ending list that I constantly add to. One more skill that I don’t possess that I sometimes wish I did, but ultimately would rather spend my time doing something else.I wonder what my kids were thinking when they were learning how to walk, how they felt when they were crawling around, heads cocked to the world above them. Were they excited to climb up and see what that new world had to offer? Did they worry about falling? Could they have been scared about what lied ahead beyond the comfort of toddling around on all fours?
I suppose they weren’t thinking any of this, but I know it all happened in baby steps, mostly. They crawled, some longer than others. The next step, cruising along the furniture, high enough to see what all of the hoopla was about, but hands firmly planted on the couch. Then one day, the balancing act, a few steps here, plop. More on another day, until finally, there was no stopping them.
Baby steps-the big picture never curtailed them. Oh, to be child-like again. Not the act-like-a-child-feel-sorry-for-myself-and-throw-a-temper-tantrum type of child-like, but the kind of child-like that takes baby steps to solve the problem at hand. The situation that isn’t earth-shattering, but only an inconvenience and it doesn’t have to swallow me up in misperceived enormity.
Fortunately, I have a few weeks before Operation Cut and Remove a Tree from Susan’s Yard can commence. Until then, I am going to take the big picture and make it into a picture book, perfect for the project.
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