The girls and I recently returned from a five day trip to Florida where we visited my 91 year old grandmother, Kathryn. Kathryn has a ranch home of her own about ten minutes from the sea where she has lived for the past 60 years. She and my grandfather lived there together until his passing 12 years ago. Her home has no microwave, no dishwasher, no internet service. It has one rotary telephone and a television that catches three channels which is only turned on for Jeopardy and the evening news. She makes her coffee in a stove top percolator. She reads the newspaper and does the crossword puzzle each day.
There are many things that I learned from this visit with my grandmother which I plan to blog about but the one thing that most interested me was the way time passed slowly while we were there. There was something so soothing and beautiful about her peaceful life. She was interested in only the task at hand. Whether it was cooking bacon, crocheting a cotton rug or rolling Mary's hair in rag curls for the night, she was fully there. There's no multi-tasking in my grandmother's world, just a slow, steady persistence and an enjoyment of it all.
Grandma ran the sprinkler for the girls to play in each day. She also filled a small tub of water for them to soak in which she put on her back patio. I thought it would only be a matter of minutes before the girls lost interest in the little tub of water. Grandma supplied them with some plastic cups and they played for hours. Hours! We sat in lawn chairs and watched them, laughing at their crazy antics and letting them pour water on our tired feet.
Each night at around eight o'clock the girls grew sleepy and we put them to bed together, plum tuckered out from a full but simple day. Then, all the dishes being done right after dinner, Grandma and I sat and played rummy or Skip-Bo and talked for the rest of the night. There was no mad rush to get on the computer, no turning on the television, just the sound of the crickets and the gentle hum of our conversation.
I have made it my goal to bring some of that peace home from Kathryn's house. I hope to slow things down here a bit, to take it one thing at a time and savor the rhythm of each day. I want my children to remember the crawling of time and the enjoyment of a simple life. I do not want them to remember a mother who spent her days staring at a computer screen, unavailable and unfriendly. I want them to look back and remember their mother sitting in the lawn chair, sipping a lemonade, with nowhere to be but right there.
