Drawing, Coloring And Playing With Buttons

So Sunday is finally here and all the kids are gone. Piper stayed with us until last night after we finished watching the movie, Up. I really love that film and Russell is my favorite character. It's nice to be able to laugh at sincere comedy and funny dialog. Dwain was astonished when he discovered last year that I had never heard nor seen, Up. While taking a course in psychology last fall, he brought Up home as homework and together we watched it on his laptop. I cried of course and Dwain became misty eyed. I don't have the DVD of it yet so I was in luck when they decided to show it again today. 

Dwain and I slept until after one o'clock p.m. We were exhausted. I can't even imagine how our friends cope with lack of sleep but I hoped in my heart that the days the children were with us, they were able to have some much needed rest. 

Today was beautiful and sunny. Dwain made us eggs over easy, bacon and biscuits with grape jelly. After our late brunch, Dwain sat and read the news and I sat down with my drawing pencils and sketched for half an hour or so. Afterwards, I felt like coloring...yes, coloring. I have an old Barbie coloring book from 2000 and a large box of two-hundred crayons. There is something so calming about coloring and the scent of the crayolas takes me to a happy place. The scent and the clicking together of map colors also has a special place in my memory bank. Those sounds and scents are nostalgic to me because they are things that I vividly remember from my childhood.

I didn't realize it earlier today but I must have been searching for things that bring a serenity to my soul. After our supper of tacos with all the fixings, I went into my guest room and went straight for my button jars. They make me think of my mother Rosa, as she always had cookie tins and jars full of buttons of different sizes, colors and shapes. I remember running my fingers through the tins or jars just to hear the "snick, snick" of the buttons falling on top of each other. I stuck my hand inside one of the mason jars and my fingers scooped up the buttons and I let them fall back into the jar. A sense of calmness came over me as I kept moving the buttons around the jar. 

For four days, I had had sensory overload while the kids were here. I suddenly realized that to unwind and get the chaos of loud voices out of my head, things that had comforted me in the past were still able to have the same effect on me today. Drawing, coloring and buttons. Who would have guessed? Not me.