When I was a little girl, very elementary school aged, we spent the summers at our summer home in the Town of Erin (that home eventually became a permanent one).
With four small children underfoot during those long hot summer days, my mother, to save her sanity, instituted "Quiet Time". If you were of napping age, well, that is self-explanatory. Those in between napping age (at either end of the spectrum) were instructed to find something quiet and stationary to do for a minimum of one hour and leave my mother in peace.
Various acceptable activities included reading, hand sewingdolls clothes, playing very quietly in one of the numerous tree forts that occupied different sectors of our 65 acres, or just lying in the fields of tall wild grass inside the small clearings of the evergreen forest hand planted by my family, his family (including me) and friends who came to visit in the early years before the big house was built. In fact, day-dreaming the afternoons away while staring at the clouds and imagining what they looked like, was a very acceptable pastime on those long summer holidays.
And so it was one evening last week I found my self alone, sans the G-man and both DD's, unexpectedly for several hours, between work and a late supper. For 4 hours I blissfully knit and read on my front proch while the sun, so infrequent of late, streamed brigfhtly on the porch where I sat. At one point there was not a sound, no cars, no neighborhood children, no barking dogs, just the sound of little birds in my cedar hedge going about their daily business.
And so it was, as I sat on my porch and knit and knit and knit, that I recalled those "Quiet Times" of my childhood, and wished with all my might that I could go back and re-institute those mandatory periods of peace, those moments of day-dreaming freedom into everyday life. I think we would all be better off for it.
Knit on..........
2 comments:
We have quiet time at my house too, when the kids were very young and I worked early am's. I would put some calm music, lie on the couch and they would play quietly on the floor as I dozed.
We still have a similar time when they are up late at night or will have activities and are a bit hyper strung.
My Mom didn't give us quiet time. We just knew that Sunday afternoons were meant for her to lie on the couch and snooze or in the sun outside. We learned very early on NOT to disturb her during that time because if we did, she would get up in a grump fowl mood. We figured out that that was the best time to stay quiet and sneak junk food out of the cupboards.
With my kids, I get plenty of quiet time every morning because my kids love to watch morning cartoons. I like to get a head start on those mornings and get up early, make coffee and take my knitting out. I don't start any chore until 10am.
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