Reflecting on Slow Days

Monday Magic

This is a prose reflection based off a poem I wrote several years ago - if you’re interested in the poem, you can find it right here.

Slow Days

There are dishes in the sink again. Toys migrating back downstairs. Library books stacked by the door, waiting to be returned. Shoes tugged onto the wrong feet by stubborn, determined hands.

There are skinned knees that need a kiss before the rest of the walk home can happen. Little knees folded under thick blankets, tucked in warm against the sharpness of a January chinook wind.

There are my own tired hands wiping counters after a late lunch, tears threading themselves through the sound of laughter from upstairs. Another small human lesson in how to live with one another. Another moment of friction and repair.

This is where ordinary magic lives.

Not in the absence of mess or exhaustion, but right inside it. Laundry still hangs on the line, forgotten from yesterday. Dishes pile in the sink, ready to be washed.
And still—there is warm tea in a mug. Tiny fingers tangled in my hair. The hush of a child who has finally fallen asleep.

The world does not stop being beautiful because I am tired. Life does not withhold its grace until everything is caught up and put away. There is always something growing along the edge of things. Wisteria climbing old brick houses. Tenderness winding its way through the ordinary. A little joy mixed in with soft grief.

Not everything has to mean something more, or be perfectly put together, perfectly executed. Sometimes it’s enough to notice what is already here.

Come see, we exist here.