Writing Challenge: Peace

Peace

The idea of peace often feels like an allusive idea: a unicorn dancing about gauze-y clouds and laughing hysterically down at me as it poops out rainbow candies.

As a mom of a 12 and 14 year old, full-time teacher, and wife to a man with Early Onset Alzheimers, it often feels that I am being yanked and strained to just the point of destruction. I think of the ropes tethering our tent tarp that is now rarely used because it is just too much work to organize a camping trip. The sun has weathered and faded them. They’ve held firm against raucous wind and unyieldingly grounded us during monsoon-ish type rainstorms. They are not what anyone would consider beautiful but they continue to be, despite age and use, practical and effective. And yet even those ropes have moments of peace (many moments now): quietly lying about in our shed, becoming friends with spiders and dust hippos.

As I prop my Covid-enlargened butt (okay, I won’t blame the COvid, I will blame my eating habits during COvid) on the edge of my chair, a gentle pre-storm breeze filters past. The neighbour’s dog bark — more of a bray than a bark — and the garbage truck’s squeaky brakes — are the only things biting into the quiet morning. The room is lit by only the clouded gray seeping under half-closed blinds. My coffee is almost warm. This is peace.

Mind shift. Peace may be allusive but it does indeed exist. For me it will have to be in moments. Brief moments. And right now, in one of those brief moments, I will choose to accept that calm both inside and outside of me.