A Good Tired

By the time I really connected with Saturday, the weekend was partly gone. It had been a short week of work with some time away to visit family sewed to the back side of the week. As the sun began heating up the air filling the open spaces with light I drove away from our house to run some errands.

I love the life I live with my wife and our daughter. It is home and feels that way. It’s not easily described in words but is a feeling that is comfortable and recognizable when I let it surround me. That said, there are other times that feel good.

One of those other times is when I take off for an hour or so on an occasional Saturday morning to run some errands. Sometimes, it is a trip to the post office. Other times, I may need a haircut. I might run by the grocery store or hardware store. I am rarely gone longer than a few hours but sometimes that is enough to be able to step back enough to recharge a bit.

On this Saturday a trip to the grocery store then the hardware store was on the agenda. The hardware store stop had an item added to it at the last minute as before I left I noticed a large fluorescent light that we use in our basement had burned out darkening a corner. Off I went in search of the needed items. As I drove to these destinations, a few of the things I needed to accomplish later in the day came into focus. This is one of the benefits to this short time alone. It allows me to zoom in on things that ultimately make our life easier and better in some cases.

I made my stops then pulled into our driveway with a list of things in my head I knew I should try to finish during the remainder of the day. As I changed that long tube of light in our basement, I could feel the heat from the outdoors. That outside force also seemed to be calling me, maybe warning me, about the day ahead. It seemed to remind me how there will always be work to do and how it could be done some other day than today. It made me consider how the icy breezes blowing all day long from air conditioning vents play a hypnotic tune if I choose to listen. Maybe the warmth of the day and my own struggle with laziness would make me reconsider the things that should get completed.

On this day, I didn’t take the easy way out. I spent several hours in the sweltering summer heat clipping bushes and tree branches. I walked the yard with a weed eater waist-high trimming away the grass from around our house and in other hard-to-reach areas. Before it was all over, I walked much of the yard again with a leaf blower, it’s extended arm aimed at grass clippings, stray sticks and twigs and scattered dirt and leaves.

Not much longer after this, it was all over. The heat of the day had loosened it’s grip some. The sun slid behind the trees at the edge of the woods behind our house. Inside that house the smell of supper on the stove seemed a nice reward for the hours of completed work. I looked over myself to see a few souvenirs of the day, slivers of grass stuck to the legs of my pants, an old pair of silver and red tennis shoes outlined now with rings around the bottoms of both shoes the shade of a watermelon rind, and, yes, even the smell of dirt and gas and grass and sweat mingled together into some unthinkable odor. A good clean-up then a good meal would be a great way to call this day done.

When that moment came, it was a good feeling. I had already concluded that though. While I rode a lawnmower through the yard matching the wheels with the last pass through the yard, I had this realization. At that point the work wasn’t yet completed but a great deal had been done. It was then I felt tired. Down in my bones, I felt stretched. The heat had starched me through and through. I understood how my back might hurt some later in the night or the next day. All those things though couldn’t replace the other feeling that seemed to overshadow being tired. I looked over at the things that had been accomplished during just a few short hours. Those things made me understand my tired was a good tired.

 

A few minutes later, I was presentable enough to sit at our dining room table. My work clothes had landed in the laundry. I had scrubbed away the yard debris and smelled like soap and shampoo. We thanked God for our day then began to eat supper. We talked. We laughed. It was that other feeling I felt then, the feeling of home. I’ll never grow tired of it even when I am bone-tired in a good way.