An Impulse

Too often in life we are confined to our "boxes" and "normal routine" and don't look around for the unexpected. We are told, "keep your head down and keep walking". And for what? The norm.

Isn't it funny how during our school age years we yearned to be "normal", to belong. Now as an adult the taste of "normal" in my mouth is bleak. I long for a break in my routine a blast of the unexpected, an impulse. Unfortunately with two working parents, young kids and the pace of life the impulses are infrequent. Sometimes I yearn for more out of my life.

As I age, my eyes have changed. Though my eyes haven't physically changed, (OK, they have changed some hence the reason I need bi-focals) my perception has changed.

I now notice the oddities. The things that don't "add up" in my daily routines.

On Sunday we enjoyed a slower Sunday afternoon strolling through a local apple orchard picking apples. And in the midst of all these loaded apples trees was a single white chair. Since the orchard we visited wasn't a heavily commercialized orchard it was even odder for us to be among this quiet orchard and then to see this random chair.

Though I walked by it a couple of times on the hunt for the best tasting heritage variety, it kept "haunting" me. What in the world was it doing here? To pick apples? Did someone need to rest while picking apples?

In the last minutes of our pick, I instinctively looked at the kids and said, "PHOTO SHOOT!" And in an impulse, I plopped the kids down and started shooting a series of shoots. No, they weren't professional, but it represented my kiddos in this "season" of their life. Keegan was mad, Fiona consoled him, Keegan was still mad...But in the last shoot (shown on top) I captured a moment in time...my kiddos.... Fiona with her toothless grin, Keegan with tear-streaked innocent cheeks. An impulse. A blast out of my "normal"...a random photo shoot in an abandoned apple orchard on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

I need more random impulses in my life to help ease the normal, the routine. Like last night when I picked butternut squash in the pitch dark with my head lamp. (Seriously...don't ask.) I think these random impulses define us, not the norm. Whether planned or on "the fly" we all need something out of the ordinary in our lives, an impulse.

From inside the little blue bungalow,
Katie Jean