Day's End
Dusk.
It’s a bit mysterious, neither fully light nor fully dark. There is some feeling of completion, the workday over, yet at the same time anticipation—scaring up dinner, getting the kids dressed for bed or getting ready to meet a friend in town. Night’s coming on, but it’s not yet here. In the meantime, shadows are deepening and I’m close to switching on the headlights as we near the short trail, trying to get a little fresh air before we settle in.
The boys love this little retreat hard by a busy road. It’s got a nice, easy trail, moss-crusted stone wall, open field, and a couple of big granite boulders for climbing. The fact that a giant of 20th-century literature lived in the modest farm-house behind us doesn’t impress them one bit; for them the Frost Farm is a place to streak across the close-cropped grass and run headlong down bumpy trails. So far we’ve avoided major injury. So far.
This evening, as light fails by degrees, the boys stand quivering at the starting line—the trailhead—as my wife and I hesitate. The trail’s surrounded by thick foliage this time of summer and is substantially dimmer than the field in which we stand. Is it safe? Anyone else back in there? Coyotes? Bears? Bogeys? We know the way but fear getting off track anyway.
I push ahead—actually, the kids sprint on in and I follow at a fast walk, soon overtaking them. We go on like this, my wife now in the lead as I stop to examine the leaf our youngest is holding out, then hurrying to catch up with his older brother, whose red shirt bobs along in front. Sooner than we’d thought, we emerge from our green tunnel into the sun’s benediction. “Can we do it again?” beg the boys.
Raising a family can be a lot like standing at that wood’s edge with the sun slowly extinguishing itself—unsettling. Tough to see what’s ahead; easy to give way to fears of unknown pitfalls, hazards, wrong turns. Indeed, we have and will continue to encounter many of these things along the path. But, God willing, we will struggle our way along and finally blunder out into the last of the bright light at day’s end . . . and all will be well.
It’s a bit mysterious, neither fully light nor fully dark. There is some feeling of completion, the workday over, yet at the same time anticipation—scaring up dinner, getting the kids dressed for bed or getting ready to meet a friend in town. Night’s coming on, but it’s not yet here. In the meantime, shadows are deepening and I’m close to switching on the headlights as we near the short trail, trying to get a little fresh air before we settle in.
The boys love this little retreat hard by a busy road. It’s got a nice, easy trail, moss-crusted stone wall, open field, and a couple of big granite boulders for climbing. The fact that a giant of 20th-century literature lived in the modest farm-house behind us doesn’t impress them one bit; for them the Frost Farm is a place to streak across the close-cropped grass and run headlong down bumpy trails. So far we’ve avoided major injury. So far.
This evening, as light fails by degrees, the boys stand quivering at the starting line—the trailhead—as my wife and I hesitate. The trail’s surrounded by thick foliage this time of summer and is substantially dimmer than the field in which we stand. Is it safe? Anyone else back in there? Coyotes? Bears? Bogeys? We know the way but fear getting off track anyway.
I push ahead—actually, the kids sprint on in and I follow at a fast walk, soon overtaking them. We go on like this, my wife now in the lead as I stop to examine the leaf our youngest is holding out, then hurrying to catch up with his older brother, whose red shirt bobs along in front. Sooner than we’d thought, we emerge from our green tunnel into the sun’s benediction. “Can we do it again?” beg the boys.
Raising a family can be a lot like standing at that wood’s edge with the sun slowly extinguishing itself—unsettling. Tough to see what’s ahead; easy to give way to fears of unknown pitfalls, hazards, wrong turns. Indeed, we have and will continue to encounter many of these things along the path. But, God willing, we will struggle our way along and finally blunder out into the last of the bright light at day’s end . . . and all will be well.
posted by Mark Reimer | 7:16 PM
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