The Root Of The Matter

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I'm setting chairs upside down on the table for the second time today.  This thrice daily act always reminds me of a diner at the end of the dinner rush, aproned worker swabbing below tables, chair legs raised in salute to the sky.  Here, its afternoon.  Sun streams in my windows, upstairs Joboy softly snores.  Girls all a-giggle, imaginations looming large upstairs in their room.

I drop chairs down one at a time, move to wipe down high chair.  B is sitting on the hardwood steps in a sunspot, soaking up winter rays and reading to me from his encyclopedia.  His words speak to me about trees and how they turn sunshine into food.  I feel fed by sunshine sometimes, too.

And while he reads and asks questions, and while I wipe and correct, now setting a basket of fresh laundry on clean tabletop, I realize that this, this is what it means.  What a true one-tapestry life looks like.  One where lunch and laundry and learning all swirl together, one organically intermingled with the next.  One where all ages have their place, each contributing to the rich patterns that trace out a full, well rounded experience.

He comes over to the window and looks out, up at the tree standing unabashedly naked in our front yard.  "It says here that many trees have almost as many roots as they do branches."  I pause to look over his shoulder, and together we try to count branches, laughing when we lose count and wondering at the deep underground that we cannot see, but know is there.  Roots, deep.

He marks his page with an old bookmark we found in a thrifted book.  Its not til I reopen the encyclopedia later in the evening that I see it,  cross right there in the middle of a science book.  And isn't that really what roots and tapestry and life really is all about - the interconnectedness of all of it, the way that the Creator whispers to us as we live our real lives and learn real things.

These four, they are like little shoots and, as they stretch heavenward, they are also putting down roots, deep - the foundation of which is being laid every day.  Its in how we live our daily lives, in how we learn and love and relate.  The every day matters.  The laundry and sweeping and giggling, the conversations we have - it matters.  How we raise little people to respond to every day life, that shapes the rest of their lives.

A sobering, exhilarating thought.