The end of the fall semester and the advent of the winter
holidays make for busy weeks and more commitments and obligations than
usual. This past week was typical of
this end of the year pace. Each night
grows colder, the darkness falling ever so sooner, and I long for a quiet
evening with a book, next to the fireplace, a luxury of laziness that seems
elusive.
One evening this week, Arden and I were heading home after
dark from a meeting with her Odyssey of the Mind Club. The sun had set, but we’d been too busy to
note if it was worth watching. All was a
dark grey, quickly fading to black, save for the twinkling of Christmas lights
in our neighborhood. I was in a hurry to
get home, to get dinner on the table and over with so that I could tackle the
stack of grading in my bag. My mind was
racing with the tasks of the evening, looming late into the night. Arden was chattering away with excitement
about her club’s activities, as she is challenged in such a meaningful way by
her participation there. I was only half
listening, trying to sort out my thoughts, and get us home.
I turned to head up the hill, nearly home, when at the same
moment, Arden and I both noticed a trio of deer in and near the road. We came to a stop and watched them watch us
for a moment. Then they turned back to
the grasses they’d been nibbling. They
hadn’t been startled by our vehicle, surprisingly, and carried on their evening
activities as if we weren’t there at all.
Silent, we watched as a young one with immature antlers led the others
across the road. They sashayed as calmly
as could be, flicked their tails and dipped their heads. Eventually, they wandered out of the scope of
our headlights and we marveled at how long we’d watched them – which couldn’t
have been more than a minute or two – yet it was such a pause in the constant
motion of the rest of the week that it seemed stretched. Normally when we spy deer in the
neighborhood, we’ve already spooked them and they bound away in a frantic dash
to safety.
As brief as that fleeting moment was on Tuesday evening,
it’s sustained me through this week of preparation for final exams, end-of-semester
projects, and holiday events. All I have
to do is breathe and recall those three deer, and I’m again removed from the
frenetic parade of mid-December, the to-do list fading in the darkness beyond
the halo of headlights, the world reduced to my daughter and me, and the deer
outside with no other plan than seeking out tender blades before serenely
moving on.