Reading: A haiku of Deb's that I really love:

Chocolate Milk Ritual

use the Star Wars cup
squeeze the bottle one second
stir counter-clockwise

Healing Woods

Daniel stayed home from school today because of his strep throat. I always dread the days when I have all three boys to handle on my own. Daniel by himself is fine, and the twins are not a problem, either, but the three of them together are boisterous and argumentative. The best way of dealing with them is to get them out of this small house and give them an opportunity to burn off their excess energy. Since Daniel said he was feeling fine this morning, I packed a lunch for the boys, and we headed out.

Our first stop was the shoe store to have the leather on Stephen's new shoes stretched and softened. A seam had been rubbing against his toe and irritating it. Stephen was immobilized in the chair while the shoe salesmen adjusted the fit, but Daniel and Matthew dashed back and forth through the store. I'd left the house with a headache, and the boys' antics only aggravated it further. I was irritable and short tempered by the time we left.

I decided to take the boys to Veterans Park. I thought we'd have the playground area to ourselves; to my surprise, the park was full of kids. Many of them were older kids, too. Why weren't these children at school?

I suggested to the boys that we take a walk first, then eat our lunch at a picnic table, and then they could play in the playground. Veterans Park has a network of crisscrossing, wooded bike trails. It had been awhile since I'd walked these paths, but the boys came here frequently with Tab last fall. So I let Daniel be the guide, a responsibility he undertook with befitting gravity.

It was a beautiful day for a walk in the woods. The intense, pervasive green of the leaves, the scent of honeysuckle, the loud birdsong, and the Jersey humidity almost gave me the impression that we were strolling through a tropical rainforest, though the oaks and horse chestnut trees were obviously those of our temperate zone.

In our mile and a half walk we noticed various creatures. Two chipmunks. A female cardinal and, later, a male. The white tail of a deer disappearing into the woods. Two black swallowtail butterflies in an airy mating dance. A starling. A crow. Two dark birds with rusty heads I couldn't identify. A tiger swallowtail butterfly. Too many squirrels and robin red breasts to count. We heard a woodpecker, but did not see it.

As we walked, I felt the pressure in my head dissipating, like water slowly draining out of an over-full wash basin. By the time we returned to the picnic area, my headache was gone.

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