Child, Live Slow.

We had a Spring rain today. It was cold and beautiful.

And everyone in the city knew that it would get colder and the rain would slow itself in the downward freeze. So the people in the city put on their coats and shoes and laughed at the sandals left on the bedroom floor from last night.

We people, in the cities and the towns and the hills and the country, we get anxious.

We anticipate. And we prepare. We fret.

We're always living so quickly.

Ask around. How are people feeling about the next month. People--they'll tell you--people are overwhelmed.

I wonder why we get so weighted down. Why today when I turned my music off and opened the window and listened to the rain turn to snow, why I was amazed at how much peace I felt, even though doing so made me miss out on other things.

I sat and closed my eyes, back to the wall in my room, and thought about what was happening through the wall and the glass.

The temperature dropped. The water in the sky froze. The people drove slower.

The little green buds that I smile at in the morning tightened up and curled inside themselves telling the Winter breath, We've captured the light of the sun, chill all you desire.

We've captured the light of the sun. For a moment, I wasn't anxious, and I anticipated nothing. I only perceived. It was calm and mild and some kind of intoxicating.

I heard the rain turn to snow.

And I realized that I'm people---people who drive too fast and talk too much and live too quick.

So I start to make promises: I'll slow down. I'll listen. I'll breathe.

I'll watch the season change from slumber to birth and I won't take the next month for granted.

And I'll remember little things.

Today I remembered that we sat three to a seat on the school bus. We were small enough to fit three of us in a seat. I had forgotten.

And I saw two pictures of my cousin's son, one from two summers ago, and one from last week. He's almost two. He grew so fast. Lived quickly.

Because when we're children, we don't know how to live slow, how to age slow.

When we're children, we heal fast and learn fast and change fast.

And what's hard to do when we're not children anymore?

To heal, to learn, to change. Let alone to do any of these things quickly.

So I want to slow down my living.

Not like in a country song that sets me on the porch watching the clouds and reflecting on old times. And not in dirty nostalgia or forlorn longing.

I want to slow down and absorb the mess of life that surrounds me, the slop that ends up in the gutters after a day of half rain, half snow. I want to understand the ticking of the clocks on the roads that connect me to the people I love. Because we're all connected by roads, to Chicago and Boston and out West and down South. The same stretches of pavement and dirt are woven together all over the country where we lay our heads.

And some of you---some of you are reading this across oceans and I'm sure at least one of you is shaking your head at my logic. You're in Germany or Russia or China or South Korea or Malaysia or some dusty or rainy or beautiful or sad place off this continent.

But we're breathing the same air.

I may not be able to take a single path on asphalt to get to where you are, but we are breathing the same air, the great forgotten cloud.

And I want for us to indulge in every breath--marvel at the slow aging of the middle years and the slow learning of the adolescent ones. The slow healing of the late and last days.

I want to appreciate every glimpse I have of the foothills: when I drive to school, walk to class, look out the windows. I want to stop taking mountain views for granted. And I want to remember why I love the plains of the Midwest, the flatness, and the way the clouds don't look the same without a contrast for their depth.

I want to remember what it was like to grow and learn and heal fast, but to live slow like the solitary moments of a child in the summer when the days are longer than the waking hours and the sun is slow and lingering like heaven and perfection at the little child's horizon: just beyond the reach of her hand as she giggles and falls asleep.

The slow settling of warmth after a cloudy morning. The thick heat of Illinois.

I want to drink it. I want to wear it on my skin and in my eyes.

I want to look out the window at the frozen buds--still green and very much alive--and hear the echo that tells me We've captured the warmth of the sun, and we'll heal fast, grow fast, learn fast. We'll live slow and steady, unrolling in the Summer and drifting in our crispy Autumn plunge.

We'll listen to the rain turn to snow, and back again.

We'll live slow and happy in the light of the sun.