Driving home from preschool drop-off, Littlest fell asleep. (She doesn't nap anymore -- this is a general rule she set up for herself). I saw her in the rear-view mirror dozing off in stop-starting stages, until the stairs eventually slid out from under her and she tumbled into the sort of sleep that's complete with gentle snoring. Never in her life has she transferred from carseat to crib and stayed asleep, so I drove to the state park up the street and parked.
I found a scrap of paper -- the back side of a reminder sent home from school -- and a pen buried under old receipts and wrappers. And I wrote. It was silent (except for the snoring). For a full thirty minutes, I sat in a slice of blue sky on a very grey day.
When she woke up, I folded up my scrap and we drove back home. We picked up and dropped off and picked up and dropped off and ate dinner and went trick or treating. And when the day was done, entirely done, I unfolded the paper and sat down to type it up. To finish my last blog post of the NaBloWriMo challenge.
I typed for awhile, squinting at my scrawl and transposing the words from scrap to screen. But then I looked at it. Really looked at it. And I selected all and hit delete. I refolded the paper and slipped it into the recycle bin. It wasn't what I wanted to say at all. It didn't come out right. The words weren't worth re-reading.
But that wasn't a wasted half hour. Not at all. I don't have any words to show for the time I stole for writing while Littlest napped. But the feeling of it -- the unexpected quiet, the pen in my hand, nothing else to do and nowhere else to be but here -- was worth more than a whole month of blog posts.
And that has always been the point of this.
