I start this morning by observing my two little nieces deep in the discussion about two squirrels right outside the kitchen window. Still in their pajamas, their wild hair tangled and undone, they are the cutest creatures I’ve ever beheld. They are my two squirrels right in the kitchen. Off and on, I turn my gaze back to the newspaper I am reading, but I am having a hard time keeping my concentration on the global news. My nieces are my news. My nieces are what’s happening right now, right here in my own little globe, and I would be being entirely stupid if I miss the real event because I was too caught up reading about what’s happening out there, in the bigger adult world.

We leave five minutes early before the school bus comes to pick them up to play outside. I suggest a game to play for us together.

“Who can find the tree the squirrels were playing on?” It’s a tough question. All the trees look alike. They are all oak trees. Confused, my niece points the wrong one.

“Here’s how you can find the right one. Think about the window you were looking out of!”

At my cue, my niece runs to the very window from which they were looking out the squirrels on an oak tree.

“It’s this window!”

“So, can you guess which tree it was now?”

“This one!”

And then, my nephew attempts to play a squirrel himself by trying to climb that very tree.

“Time for the bus!”, I yell, trying to stop him from ruining his clean clothes before the school even began. We run to the bus stop, and while waiting, I chitchat with one of my neighbors about teaching kids how to be bilingual and our works.

Then I come home, back to my computer, and without my two biggest distractions gone to school, I can finally focus on my reading. With a perfect tune playing in the background, I am taken back to the times of Mozart, remembering how far we have come, how far I have come, how far we have advanced for better or worse, and still progressing, hopefully. We rise and fall like the notes on a sheet music, like the sound waves in the air, we dance, fight, stand still, and move along, floating, to the rhythm of life.

And what a dance I am dancing these days.

What a gentle, soothing life I am living these days.

My soul fits the rhythm of this 18th century music perfectly.

I think I’ve found my rhythm.