Evening

I am sitting on my front porch, enjoying the last rays of sunshine; they just peeked through the clouds after a full day of hard, steady rain.  The moisture in the air is so thick that I can see it drift by and it blurs the edges of the trees at the end of my driveway.  Birds are singing loudly all around me, and a curious chipmunk just stopped mere inches from my toes, startled when he saw me, and took off running. 
Too often I forget to take this pause at the end of the day, when the kids have been tucked beneath their blankets and the house is quiet (or quieter, at least, as a house with two dogs is never exactly quiet).  Too many nights I spring from tucking in one child (we alternate nights of tucking in each child, so every other night I have Harry, and every other night I have Emma) to cleaning up the living room, or starting a load of laundry, or watching tv.  Too often I forget that it is good for my soul to just sit on the porch and listen to the birds, watching the mist drift by.
And now the baby is crying, and the spell is broken.  It was nice for the five minutes it lasted, though.