Unplugged yet connected

“One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.”
-Robert Frost

We were without the use of our landline telephone and plagued by spotty internet connection for a full week last week. I must confess that it was a bit disconcerting how anxious this made me feel. How have I become so tied to wires and wireless connections that when they snap, I feel as if the ground shifts and footholds disappear?

In the middle of being off the grid, we held Camp Alexander, our annual summer week with our grandson (without his Mama and Dad). What a glorious week it was. We spent every day but one (the day we went to Harrisburg to see Aunt Alexis' owls and kingly Uncle Rob) in the water. We splashed and he tubed the magical Spring Creek, we experienced the outdoor pool at Penn State, and we swam (and boated) several times in waters of Whipple Dam. We were outdoors so long and so often that my tan is deeper than after a week on a North Carolina beach!

Before bed each night we read James and the Giant Peach, during the day we molded play dough, built block garage complexes, created a chalk roadway on every hard surface surrounding our house, looked for butterflies, and watched rabbits scamper in the yard. One rainy morning we simply sat observing pools of water forming on the street outside. Alex quietly stated, “Nana, I love watching the rain make puddles on the road.” I can’t remember the last time I puddle watched, but most assuredly, it has been far too long.

The juxtaposition of a child’s innate capacity for unfettered play with my own seemingly peripatetic pattern of relating to the world through a keyboard or a phone has been revealing. My wired life creates a surreal urgency that robs me of the truly significant. I need to do less to live more fully…every, every day.


p.s. In addition, my dishwasher died last week. The jury is still out on whether or not washing dishes by hand creates spiritual discipline.