Five Minute Friday // Reach

It's been a while since I participated in Five Minute Friday, but today, I have some time to myself and it feels good to just write.

This morning we walked. My husband and daughter, alongside my mother and father in law. We walked through woods, alongside an estuary and up to the peak of a hill that looked out to sea. I had not expected the wind to be blowing as hard as it did, up there on top of the hill. But it did and it was beautiful. As my father in law walked ahead of me with arms outstretched, letting the wind buffet and billow his shirt, I simultaneously reached for the wind with my hands, and wondered at how, sometimes, it feels like I could catch it in my hand, cupped like a perfect sphere, and then throw it back to itself. While I am reaching to catch the wind, I am conscious of how my mind always feels like it is in two places - with my thoughts and thinking of my daughter. Always conscious of her. Even now, as I sit in solitude (but also surrounded) in a coffee shop, my thoughts are reaching for her and her red hair whipping in the wind, while my mind tries to reach, no stretch, for the words to write here. Because these days, writing is a discipline. The time and words don't flow easily like they once did. Raising a baby has scattered my thoughts, and so I will continue this game of reaching and stretching to try and pin the words down into something coherent, while they float off like a balloon on the wind. And while I try to catch the words, I will remember how good it felt to reach for the wind, knowing I will never catch it.