Words are funny things, wiley creatures, slippery and shimmery. One makes time. Surely not. And yet…

Commonly on business trips, I do not make time. My usual work doesn’t stop its demands when the work on site adds its needs to the clamor of the day. And so I retire to my hotel in the evenings with my takeout and my laptop until past my bedtime. 

Not this time.

My children, I realized, do not know that a darkened forest tunnel will feel cooler, the air lighter, than the meadow they just exited. They haven’t learned the precise angle that is safe to traverse down a rooted path to a creek bed without tumbling. They don’t know that the quiet one walks, the more one sees. 

I have my work cut out for me making more time for the important lessons of childhood.