Whenever I come home from being away, I walk in the door of my house and for a moment I can see things with fresh eyes. The little house looks sweet and fresh, and I can see the character features that tend to melt into the background on a normal day. My kitchen is a little larger than I remember it, and the stairs to the second floor (affectionately, “The Granny Killers”) aren’t as steep as they are in my memory, and their quirky turn and tiny window lets the sun in to stroke your hair as you walk up the scuffed white faces of the steps.

In those first five minutes before the house is washed over with routine, I can see it the same way I did when I walked in the front door the very first time, and everything in me responds with a quiet “Yes! This will work. Anything can happen here, I can feel it.”

When I used to work in theatre, I got that feeling all the time. It was hard not to, when what the stage held from night to night would be worlds apart. I would slip out of the offices, away from designing posters and managing social media accounts, and into the big open auditorium that holds the stage- the house. I would start up at the front, in the audience, and walk up towards the back of the house until I was up where the floor was painted black and up close to the stage again, where the floor under me had turned into a metal lighting grid.

From that steep view up above the audience, where the lights hum and you can see the knots that hold up the curtains, everything is possible. I would sit up by the lights and for a few minutes I would have that same moment, where the possibilities for this room and the people connected to it were so unlimited, I couldn’t fathom it for a moment. Like I was in a building full of dreamers and magicians, who could make anything they wanted appear. Like the only answer to everything, was yes.

Trying to get to that moment in the middle of a normal day is tricky. When I’m waiting for the phone to ring, or am dealing with a hard customer, when I’m missing an old friend, or I’m trying to word my next sentence it’s easy to let the possibility of this moment slip by and fade into the background. It’s easy for me to be so wrapped up in my thoughts that I fail to notice this moment is no less special than the ones where the perspective is already laid out for me.

So I’ve been working on my sense of wonder. I’m listening to good council, making beautiful things from nothing with my hands, eating well, encouraging the people around me, and I’m trying to make space for play in between the running around parts of daily life.

It’s a work in progress, but from what I hear it’s the working that counts.

{images: 1, 2, 3}