A Good Day

Fall is here and it’s lovely, but the time change always throws me for a loop.  We planned to take it easy last weekend after the whirlwind of the past few weeks, and Sunday, we took a little drive to Rockdale, a small town I’d heard of but never visited.

Truth be told, it wasn’t our first choice, but all of our favorite day trip locales are reeling from the recent floods.  Smithville, Wimberley, and Kyle got hit really hard and are in a period of mourning and recovery.  It’s not the time to explore downtown areas in search of hidden treasures.  There’s a feeling of sadness hanging over Austin and the entire Central Texas region these days, as our neighbors begin to dig themselves out from the damage of a storm that came quietly in the night, the water rising higher and higher while we slept.

(Pretty fall colors.)

These things seem to strike hardest where people don’t have much, and residents were stuck on rooftops for hours, waiting for help.  A few people lost their lives as their cars were swept away in the dark, the drivers unable to see the rising creeks and rivers as they headed to work in the early morning rain.  A mother, her baby, a pastor, a teacher, all taken by the water.  It is so heartbreaking and unimaginable, especially in the middle of such a long, hot drought.

(Butterfly-friendly plants.)

My boys don’t know about these things yet; they are still too young.  And it’s my job to protect them and to keep them young for as long as I can.  So we drove out to Rockdale, past the soaked fields and the puddles reflecting in the sun, and ate lunch at our normal spot, the local Dairy Queen.  It wasn’t the easiest lunch, and things seemed pretty stressful for some reason.  We couldn’t wait to get out of there and on with our day.

(Visitors in the butterfly garden.)

But then we found a lovely park, shaded with lots of pretty trees, three playscapes, and a butterfly garden.  The boys ran happily and found four older girls to play with.  One girl, watching over her younger sister, was friendly and talked to me.  She said the boys both look like me, and she was patient with them when they bossed her around.  Most of the children were there by themselves, but it felt safe, in the park nestled in the middle of a neighborhood in that tiny Texas town.

(The boys thoroughly enjoying themselves.)

We stayed a while and enjoyed the cooler weather, the acorns, and the bright sun shining after we moved the clocks back that morning.  Ryan walked around the park taking pictures, and when we got home, I found these.

Our trip wasn’t the best we’ve taken, and our thoughts were elsewhere that day, but these pictures are lovely and capture a beauty that we didn’t see then.  We came home to our warm house by the creek that didn’t fill, where our boys sleep safe at night.  It was a good day, and I want to save these memories of it.

If you’d like to help the residents of Central Texas as they recover from the recent floods, you can find more information here.