listening

Some mornings there is a moment when the day tells you what to do.

A whisper.  Persistent and clear.  When you leave the dishes undone in the kitchen and slip on the quickest clothes and go.  When you abandon any plans that had been on your list or in your mind.

You follow the whisper, a quiet roar.

Yesterday was one of those mornings.  I heard the whisper, simple and profound.  "Go pick grapes" it said.

So we took a trip (somehow perfectly timed between school bus pick ups and pre-school drop offs)  to a local farm.  A vineyard overflowing with concord grapes.  Where little hands can reach.  Where a toddler can squish and drop grapes by the fistful and it is fine.  Where you can run up and down the rows and still gather 15 pounds of goodness in a short time.

The weather, cool and damp.  Boot weather.

The smell of the grapes, intoxicating, always and forever taking me back in time to my great-grandmother's house where these same grapes grew in her city lot.  I've gotten better at spitting out those pesky seeds since those days as a little girl in her yard.

It was quiet, save for an occasional breeze and exclamations of discovering humantic (Lovey's own word for humongous and gigantic) bunches.  The whisper sighing in soft relief for my having listened.

And me, grateful I did.