Living Vertically,  Our Kids, Our Family

Busses Away! Flip the Switch.

Watch my smoke!

After a summer of constant,  joyful, [hot, dry], adventurous activity, I’m sitting alone on Day One of School with …. rain!

I wouldn’t have thought to ask for it, but here it is.  

The buzzing frenzy of summer – sports camps, weekends Up North, city outings, and even the pressure of seizing the moment — is for this instant, washed away. Amazing Rain. I submit the day.

It’s time to tend to the business that’s been revving through captured ideas on Evernote and paper piles on my desk, and return to a more rhythmic dialogue in this blog. For all the meetings I’ve scheduled for this week and next, I prepare and train my focus. Build Brave Business. Go.

The goodbyes this morning were quick and easy as the High School Freshman, the Second Grader and the Birthday Husband dashed away under umbrellas for the Day One Bus.  Egad. I shake off the invitation to wallow in the passages that dazzle and tease before my eyes.

We don’t fret because we have today, and we know how magnificent they are when they grow strong.

It happens fast. Volleyball started weeks ago, so the schedule got serious extra-early. Music, flag football, homework, will all kick in this week.

But wait! One last summer tradition. One last outing for which we pack up the rented travel trailer and don’t forget the hammer dulcimer. For fifteen years we’ve not missed the Wheatland Music Festival in Remus, Michigan: always the weekend following Labor Day.  In our wiser-years we’ve migrated from partying in the Pines Campground, to spreading out in the Highwoods Family Camp. This is our traditional weekend to do things we don’t do any other time.

 

Steve erects a giant flagpole, lashed out of the remnants of a split rail fence.

(The flag: a pirate flag of course.) Jack meets up with the kid with the colorful Mohawk named Levi.

We slush through the dew on the early morning farmland to get coffee and see who’s stayed up all night playing music. The kids make folk instruments and dance to crazy bluegrass music. They get older and spend more time adventuring on their own.
(She let’s go again).

The 15,000 people know one another because we all greet “Happy Wheatland!” from the moment we line up on the once-quiet farm road with our wristbands.

 

One last hurrah, then it’s officially time to switch.

Would I belie my own truth if I prayed for not-rain?

I wish you a great start to a new season! And I send you great encouragement for your own switch.

 

Our Agenda: Emotional Wealth and more kinds of Switching