On snowy Friday mornings, the blankets come out. I stir unsweetened cocoa into my black coffee and remember winter mornings from fifteen years ago, when I sat by windows and looked out at grey skies and snowflakes drifting past, and wondered.

Just, wondered.

This morning, the kids are in their self-made work spaces, reading, learning, doing. I’m mapping out an afternoon of finishing the many, many editing projects I have still lingering in my queue from the busiest wedding season ever.

But, oh. There’s the glorious winter’s morning light pouring in through the tall windows and down over my face. And there are soft snow flakes, swirling. And my coffee is still hot.

People have been asking lately, if I ever get the itch.

They mean, do I ever want more babies. 

But, I was married young. I had my babies when I was young. I don’t know that I ever gave myself a chance to have the itch, in terms of babies, in the first place.

Also, I am in a house, free of diapers, and where I can sleep, uninterrupted almost every night,  for the first time in ten years.

So, no. Firmly and decidedly, no. I do not have any baby itch in me, whatsoever.

My soul, however, is full of itches.

My soul still drifts back decades, to all of the window sills where I’ve let my daydreams play out across the skies.

And I want to sit and wonder. Just, wonder.

I want to plan and go and do.

I want to believe, as I did fifteen years ago, that the possibilities are endless and that life is still for the making.

 

Around my house,  Asher reads to an audience of his stuffed animals. Lila teaches her Isabelle doll how spell. Evaline uses Dharma as a pillow and points to the pictures in a book about Minnie and Mickey. Alex finished his online curriculum and is now lost in a book.

The rest of their day will more than likely involve some daydreaming, some business plotting for Lila and Laney, some bickering as worlds of imagination don’t mesh seamlessly for all, some time outside in the snow, ignoring the tundra-like cold and embracing the freedom and happy rush of sledding down the same bumpy slope, ten, fifteen, twenty times.

I find myself both envious and inspired. I want to finish this work and get down to the business of living, in this moment, right here. The snowy one. The impossibly cold one. The one that will be gone in an instant.

And I want to let these itches come as they may, but not be only sighs against a window pane, as snow drifts down and my coffee turns cold. I want to let the yearning for all that is possible, be an encouragement to this settled-but-not-settled soul that stirs beneath my skin,

On that note, this day isn’t going to live itself, so off I go.