Eli's rolodex

This past Tuesday we gathered up a crew of friends and relatives and caravanned back down to the Pizza Farm to celebrate Jon's 40th. It was a cool, mostly cloudy, evening, but we were bundled appropriately. Darkness descended much earlier in late September than back in August when we had first made this journey. The farmers have strung some christmas lights up around the ordering/stone fire area, but the rest of the farm is free of artificial light. MaryBeth and Tim tried to keep the cold and dark at bay by firing up a fancy candlabra, but it only lit the immediate surroundings. Beyond that circle lay the night, and our boys delighted in it. The crew of kids started out with a rather civilized game of sharks and minnows, but before the first minnow was caught it had devolved into a melee of crazed happy running and tackling and glee. This continued on unabated while the adults continued to eat and chat and relax in the lovely country evening, removed from our phones and our computers and our lives. Too soon we had to pack everyone up and return to the cities.

Once I had the kids snuggled down under their warm comforters I asked, "Did you guys have fun? I have such great memories of running around in the dark as a kid and you guys don't get a chance to do that as much."
They both murmured their assent, and then Eli added as an afterthought, "I felt kind of like a feral brawler."
"A what??"
"I don't know, a feral brawler, those words just seem to fit how I was feeling."
I chuckled, thinking that feral conjures up images of barn cats and my boys certainly had been tussling around like a pair of wild kittens. Then the next day I did a quick search of the word 'feral' just to see if I had the right word in mind. Here's the wikipedia definition: a feral organism is one that has escaped from domestication and has return, partly or wholly, to a wild state. The introduction of feral animals or plants to their non-native regions can disrupt ecosystems....However, returning lost species to their environment can also have the opposite effect, bringing damaged ecosystems back into balance.

I read that definition and then marveled at my son's ability to name something. His brain is like a giant rolodex of words and when he needs one he gives it a spin and then plops his finger in and pulls out a word that fits the need to a T. The whole time we had been at the farm I was thinking about how busy we had been lately and that how it would be so much easier to just skip going and continue on with the hectic pace of our lives, but once we were there it felt so great to step out of the race and sit back in the dark and enjoy the moment of quiet (if you could ignore the screams of glee/fright from the kids) and be with friends. I felt like we had escaped momentarily from 'domestication' and had been returned to a more natural state, and I felt a little closer to balanced. The kids were not relaxing or reflecting, certainly, but they were loosed of their rules, their homework, their routines, and set free into the night, and were happier for it. So here's to more frequent evenings full of friends, fun, and feral brawling.