It was a REAL Fall!

Dani was sound asleep when the thunder and wind drummed up the leafy marching band and swirled into an unrehearsed formation of autumn paisley. At least I think it was paisley. Without a seat in heaven, or at least a view from the blimp cam, I can't be too certain. Sometimes you're just too close to the ground to see anything but swirls and specks and chaos.

I lifted my head, then more aligned with the desk than my spine, and sighed window-ward with worry of a nap interrupted. Wake my child, ruin my hour of peace, and I turn into a storm of my own making. My husband will bear witness that it's best not to get caught in that particular weather pattern.

But in the end, the weather didn't wake her. It woke me instead, woke me from my task-oriented nap time to take in the strange autumn afternoon, to set aside the things needing doing in order to see to things needing to be seen.

I wondered what it meant when the rain pounded its fists on the pavement while the sun shone on as if to say "there's nothing to see here, folks." Even the sun couldn't cover up the rogue raindrops escaping around its rays, the uncommon outburst splattering onto a well-lit lawn. There was nothing steady about the rain, and nothing partly about the sun.

The storm (if you could call it that) ended, Dani woke after a respectable slumber, and off we went to fetch big brother. Two steps past the classroom door, Caed recalled the highlight of his day. "A big big wind came! And then there was a REAL FALL! Do you know how many leaves were falling? A million! And did you know that's why it's called Fall? It was a Fall today! A REAL Fall!"

"Did it do that at home?" he continued. "And how many leaves do think there are now, at home? Maybe a million there too?" He couldn't stop talking about Real Fall, and I couldn't stop thinking how listening to his voice and together watching leaves twirl is like looking down from the sky at the ground-ridden mess of motherhood and seeing a gorgeous paisley pattern.

We pedaled straight to the park when we got home. And there, waiting for us to take off our helmets and take a peek, was a rainbow. We shouted and pointed and set off to catch what Dani identified as the "rainboat".

Dani and I were certain we had chased the rainbow into disappearance. "Da rainboat is all gone. We can't c'imb on it," she reported as we bicycled home. But Caed wouldn't hear of it. "The rainbow went away for you," he said, "because you just got too close. But I never stopped seeing it."


Linked to Tuesdays Unwrapped (of course!) where Emily encourages us to find and appreciate the beautiful patterns of paisley in the midst of our everyday mess. And today I didn't have to look very hard or very far. When Real Fall arrives wrapped in a rainbow, it's hard to miss, even for a head down, list and check mark girl like me.