And I love it.
We do quite a few home school lessons with the Kindle, I check out library books, and well that's it so far, but boy do we like it. I also have a fancy phone, the kind that gets email and internet. No, not an iPhone (just tried to spell that with a capital I, shows exactly how tech savvy I am), but fancy enough.
There was a time not too long ago when we had none of these gadgets. In fact we took great pride, some might even say we reveled in our gadget-less existence. Luddites? Yes, us. Now we are different people. Some days it is difficult to pry my nose out of my many gadgets. Some days it is difficult to look up and see the lovely golden color cast over our back yard by the neighbor's tree. I look out front and wonder when the mums began to flower, and didn't we just have tomatoes planted there?
Last night I was attempting to find some pictures of a baby Josie for Mom and had to wonder, wasn't she that little just yesterday? When did her cheeks lose their chub?
Then I remember that it is actually 2011. Not two years ago, three, even four. It is now. Put down the gadget. Look at them now. Those cheeks are still chubbly. I just have to look.
FALL SONG
Mary Oliver
Another year gone, leaving everywhere
its rich spiced residues: vines, leaves,
the uneaten fruits crumbling damply
in the shadows, unmattering back
from the particular island
of this summer, this Now, that now is nowhere
except underfoot, moldering
in that black subterranean castle
of unobservable mysteries - roots and sealed seeds
and the wanderings of water. This
I try to remember when time's measure
painfully chafes, for instance when autumn
flares out at the last, boisterous and like us longing
to stay - how everything lives, shifting
from one bright vision to another, forever
in these momentary pastures.