With Oscar and I being home 90% of the time these days thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, we spend a lot of time on our deck. Our backyard is basically half deck and half paving with no grass, which I admit is not really a great option for a little kid who loves to walk (and now also run) endlessly around. Still, we try and make do with the cards we’ve been dealt, so I am learning to love the deck.
Mornings have become pretty much my favourite time to be out there. Now that the sun is rising a little later, we are up and about in time to watch it slowly make its way above the fence and creek across the deck. It’s a delightfully slow and measured process, which of course I am only now seeing in all its little details as I have never really just been sitting around at home to watch it happen.
Our back garden area might not be very big, but to Oscar it is a wonderland of things to explore and discover. It’s a great perspective shift to spend time with a toddler, particularly during times like this when everything seems so big and impossible to understand. Toddlers don’t know what is happening outside the door, they don’t know the worry and the anxiety and the concerns. All they know is what is right in front of them. They are entirely in the present, driven by their own need for adventure and their eagerness to learn.
So these days instead of going out to see friends or do activities with other people, instead of going to playgrounds or catching the train or wandering around the shops, we spend our mornings on the deck watching the sun rise over the fence. Oscar looks at all the plants and brings me pebbles and rocks he has found in lots of different shapes and sizes. He walks his walker across the decking, relishing the noise it makes on the wood. I drink my coffee and hang washing and let everything go really, really slow because that’s just the season we’re in right now, and that’s ok as well.
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