I recently bought myself a bicycle with a trailer. It’s a little two-seater that hooks on to the back of my bike with a spot for my girl and her baby brother. One of my summer goals is to ride it every day (Penny has the same goal, though the amount of times per day is something we haven’t yet agreed upon).

On Thursday we set out to find a park – it was a sunny, non-windy day (if you’re not from the plains of North Dakota, you must know these days are hard to come by). I was in the middle of an audiobook and I thought the ride would be a good opportunity to knock out a few chapters (while exercising and keeping my kids entertained? amazing!). I couldn’t find my earbuds and after much searching I sighed and agreed to take my naked ears on a bike ride.

Recently I’ve been trying to whittle down my attention from many things at once to just one at a time – asking myself if it is still possible to give something my undivided attention. I hope you know I mean whittle quite literally – have you ever fashioned a stick into a spear? You’ll get there, one shaving at a time – an abundance of time after you start. So far I’ve gotten rid of Instagram and Twitter, and I’m really trying not to use my phone while giving my 8-month-old his bath.

Back to the bike ride. It’s a funny thing when you have a toddler riding behind you – because you can hear everything they say and they can hear approximately 0% of your responses. I had to pull the bike over several times just to answer my daughter’s infinitely pressing questions while facing her so she could hear me. At first none of her queries seemed important – but then it occurred to me that she is an almost 3-year-old cruising behind her mom’s bike, snuggled with her baby brother, and experiencing the outdoors in vivid detail for the first time in months. Find a more interesting commentary on Spotify – I dare you!

Her dad often sings her old hymns as he’s putting her to sleep – songs she has memorized phonetically and sings often, even if she has no idea what “interposed his precious blood” means. To hear your daughter singing in her perfect toddler voice all 4 verses of Amazing Grace is hard to describe. Through many trials, toys, and snares…

We arrived at the park and there was a symphony of birds chirping – no doubt sharing Penny’s delight in the true resurrection of Spring. I tried to draw her attention to the sound, but she needed proof and she didn’t see any birds in her 24-inch purview. We grabbed Judah and hunted for birds, ultimately finding a robin that was hopping a little too close to her feet. When you’re almost 3, it’s hard to remember last summer. Soon the robins will be our friends again.

We played at the little park – swinging, climbing, exploring. Sometimes the whittle reaches a point where you really can focus on one thing. My daughters laugh. Judah’s obsession with light. The chirping of the birds and the almost green of the grass.

When I was 24 I started bartending at an executive club. I’d get there at 2pm to get the bar set up for open at 4. I’d turn ESPN on as I walked in the door, hoping to get a rundown of the 2pm sports headlines. Great bartenders know a little about a lot of things – the customers are the experts, you just need to find what it is they want to talk about. Currency in that role is about width, not depth.

A decade later the world has become a ticker of headlines – about everything imaginable. Social media feeds are personalized tidbits hoping for engagement – comments or clicks. I find myself a victim of this way of thinking – I know a thousand details about a thousand topics. But what am I really an expert on? What have I really studied that I can offer to the world I live in? Not the online one, but the physical walls my family is being raised in – the neighborhood we ride our bikes in – the church we sing our hymns in.

Time is moving too fast in the part of my life where my kids all live in my house. Before I had kids it seemed like such a massive commitment – committing 18 years to each kid was hard to measure in my young brain. Now that my last kid is over halfway through his first year of life I find myself panicking – the time is going too fast. Ben is 8 now and I want to freeze time forever. I can’t give all these hours to the online world – I simply can’t! Maybe the seconds are more interesting there – but the hours with my sons, my husband, and my daughter are pure gold. The stuff of life. The richness, the marrow.

Here’s to a summer of bike rides – naked ears, open heart.