Tales of the Ordinary Days

The title of this blog is very appropriate. At least from my current perspective. 'Let him ride the damn bike.' Yesterday I needed a break from e-mail and the busyness of work. An endeavor that never seems to reduce. One of my guilty indulgences of the day was watching some old videos that I recently had restored. It was all good fun until I reached the segment recorded in the clip above. With Ben over my shoulder, we watched me 'helicopter' my eldest as he learned to ride his bike. Even Ben commented, "Mom, what were you doing?" At the time, I thought what I was doing was perfectly normal. What any good mom should be doing. I was helping my son learn to ride his bike. From my vantage point at the time, I was where I needed to be to ensure his safety and to keep him going in the right direction. But from my current vantage point of observing from my computer screen, fifteen years later, what I saw was completely different. How could the ch...

The view outside my bedroom window, 8:49 pm Our windows are cracked on a beautiful May Saturday night. The only sounds are the chirping of birds from nearby trees and a distant hum of car engines. Lawns are mowed and trash bins quietly put away without a sound of human in range. Home from a movie and dinner, Garrett and I are greeted only by our happy animals. Grant is out fishing with friends without a thought of hanging out at home. We haven't seen Ben's smiling face since Thursday morning when he left for his summer job. A text this morning let me know he was safely at his dad's. A lot has changed in the fifteen years since we first inhabited this house. My recent addiction to watching home video tapes has been a stark reminder of this. Each converted DVD runs about 2 hours and I watch them from start to finish, noticing the little life details that were temporarily forgotten. December 2000 was our move in date to Elm Circle. This was right before Grant's f...