Snow Day

 

More snow days!  Every day a new layer of snow is added to the ever-present layers of snow already fallen.   Some days, things are changed up by the snow turning into freezing rain...but always, there is some form of precipitation falling from the sky and always, the ground is being added to, not subtracted from.  Public school children have hardly had a full week of school since Christmas and I am jealous of their snow days!  Home-educated children don't need to traverse icy, dangerous roads to get to their school books and so, they are deprived of the utter delight the 'School's closed' announcement can bring.  (I remember that delight.)

Except.

Except this:

"I have been suffering from low motivation, and an inability to accomplish much of anything that feels really satisfying lately.  I think that winter is to blame.  Obviously I do a lot, but sometimes I really need to tackle a fun project to completion in order to feel like I am not just spinning my wheels.  That’s why we craft, right?  Because so much of of mama’s life involves doing work that will be quickly undone in a seemingly endless cycle.  That work is good and important, but sometimes I need something more.  When I make or re-make something, it usually stays that way for a little bit longer than the floors stay clean after a good mopping."  ~ from Ginny's blog.

That is exactly, to the letter, the very own thoughts that have been running through my very own head.  I read that paragraph last night and felt that bit of camaraderie one finds with a total stranger, who oddly doesn't feel anything like a total stranger but, in fact, a sister.  Who understands. 

Why?  Because that very morning, I had told the children they wouldn't have to crack open a single school book, write a single spelling word, practice a single math fact IF they spent the day creating something- anything.  As long as they were creating (whatever and however that creating took form) they could have the day to themselves.  It was for them...but it was also for me.  Because I was wishing for a moment or two to devote to something that wouldn't get undone in that seemingly endless cycle.  Something tangible, that hold on and stays for a bit. 

Not surprisingly, my own bit of creativity was hampered a bit as the littler children needed some direction and help in the making/implementing of ideas.  But I was able to begin a skirt that I have been hoping to begin for Corynn- but instead of me whipping it out on my own, I decided that we ought to work on it side by side.  Which is, as it turns out, so much better.

By the end of the day, the house was a complete and total wreck. The children had flitted from one project to another, whenever the mood would strike and I let them.   There were yarn bits, cooled blobs of hot glue, popsicle sticks and paintbrushes, bits of cut paper and markers in every square in of the downstairs, right up until dinner time... but the atmosphere was thick with creativity and productivity.  It feels a bit liberating to allow yourself and your children to become mess-makers, not caring a whit about tidiness for an entire day.  

It all eventually got cleaned up and put right (that was the other part of the deal) and we, all of us, were the better for our 'snow day'.