Moved in the stillness

After dinner, I looked out the window. The sun had dipped below the horizon until all that was left of it were pink and orange streaks making arcs and bubbles in the sky.

Without saying a word to my family, I passed through the doorway, crossed the patio and collapsed into the hammock to watch the spectacle of dusk. Just a moment of peace after a busy day.

I'd been outside hardly a minute when my husband opened the back door, letting the Junebug out.

"Mommee-ee-ee-ee!" he squealed as he ran to me.

"He wondered where you were," my husband said, who stayed inside and closed the door.

I pulled the Junebug onto the hammock next to me, and soon the Man-cub joined us. I was flanked by little boys.

"That looks like a rainbow!" the Man-cub said, looking at the same marvel of sky.

I smiled and squeezed them close to me, one of my arms around each boy.

Time slowed down. I remember the rising and falling of breathing. I remember the Junebug's baby-fine hair whisping across my cheek like a feather. I remember the individual fronds of the palm trees, looking almost black in silhouette against the sunset in the west, moving together and yet individually in the breeze. Even the rarely-still Man-cub melded next to me in the quiet. We listened to the local high school band practicing -- starting and stopping in such a way it could have been just another cricket.

And we watched the sky, like an Impressionist painting in motion.

It was probably only a few minutes, but it may as well have been an hour.

It's great to do just nothing with my guys.

Yet even while we were doing nothing, I was completely moved.