The Quiet Country House

Little Moments...

I started 2004 with the intention to chronicle our year in narrative and photos. I got off to a good start, and have a wonderful journal of the month of January, complete with great photos of my children, the interior of our house, and the way winter dressed the lakes and hills in that chilly season. Unfortunately, I failed to maintain what turned out to be a huge commitment of time and effort.

I have flirted with journaling my entire life, but never sustained the habit on a long term basis. I think I may have found my journaling "medium" in keeping a blog. I don't generally use it to chronicle our day to day activities, but the way that our lives change subtly with the seasons is evident to me as I read back through my posts. Glimpses of where we went or what we did are intertwined with the expression of my thoughts.

I wonder if I will go back some day and read, with a feeling of nostalgia, earlier Quiet Country House blog entries, as I read this today in my photo journal from January 2004:

"Very fine snow is slowly falling, giving all the world a misty appearance. The only movement out of doors in our quiet little corner of the world is the snow and the pheasant in the creek bed. As I write, it is 10:30 AM. Limerick is already out on a call or two. Sijo and Haiku are watching a cartoon on PBS on my bed. Senryu is upstairs - reading, of course - and Tanka is back to sleep, though he woke around 8:00 and was up for just a little while. I have laundry going, have "picked up" the bedroom, and plan to dive into a very messy kitchen after a little time on the computer. I spent most of Sunday afternoon making Pasties. The filling is time consuming, then I made a double batch of pastry. A big mess, but yummy and worth it. Only Sijo wouldn't eat it."

Are these the things that will matter to me later... these little details? That Sijo wouldn't eat pasties when he was 4 years old? That the kitchen was messy from a meal made from scratch? I think these are the things that will matter. It is the little moments, added together, that make a life. It is nice to be very still sometimes, for just a little while, and consider the importance of all the little moments.

photo from 2004, the first sunset of the year, by Aisling