A Day Like Today

Do you ever have those days where your heart literally aches for the past? Or those days where everything seems just right? There was just something about today that made me simultaneously nostalgic and utterly grateful for exactly where I am.  What was it that made today so special?  From an outsider's point of view it probably would have looked like a relatively routine day:

Bea woke us up around 7:30am.  

I made breakfast (which took Bea about an hour to finish..seriously...it was just a bowl of yogurt with strawberries and granola), started a load of diapers and swept, vacuumed the house and hung up aforementioned diapers.  

Bea and I went to the library for about an hour and then came home to eat lunch with Ike.  

She took a nice two hour nap which gave me time to organize all of my digital photos and files.  

When she finally did wake up, we had a snack and then headed off to the pool.  

About 5pm, we came home; Bea hung out with Ike outside while I cooked dinner.  

We read a few books while our salmon patties cooled down and after dinner I watered flowers and then the three of us relaxed on the front porch.  

And finally, bath time for Bea and then off to bed.

See, pretty routine.  Some might even say boring.  So, again, why did today stand out to me?

Well, it really didn't, until I started reflecting on it while I was cooking dinner.  I started thinking about what a beautiful, fleeting time it is in our life: Ike (our sole breadwinner) has an abundance of work coming in...work he thoroughly enjoys. Bea is challenging us in every way, but remains an endless source of joy throughout the day and amazes me almost constantly.  She wants to be with me all the time...helping me, hugging me, cuddling with me, and I know that this won't last much longer.  My pregnancy is winding down into its last two months; a pregnancy that will be my last, and as someone who loves being pregnant, it is really an awe-inspiring time to be in this body.  The light is really shining on our family right now.

(Photo by Mary Lundberg of Bloom Photography)

Are our days perfect?  Um, no...far from it.  Ike and I annoy each other pretty regularly, and have our fair share of matrimonial woes that I won't get into here.  Bea has perfected the art of the high pitched little girl scream and pushes my buttons as frequently as Ike does.  She is a stubborn, independent little cuss.  The political climate in our country, the struggles of those in need and those suffering unbearable oppression here and around the world, weigh heavily on us almost constantly.

But they are beautiful in their messy imperfectness.  And from an insider's perspective they are anything but boring...they are punctuated by the small miracles of everyday life:

When Bea wakes up, I can always hear the pitter patter of her feet coming into our bedroom.  I hoist her up into bed and she curls up between Ike and I.  And in those early moments of the morning, no matter how uncomfortable I slept, or how much Ike snored during the night, it's just the three of us, all soft and warm from sleep.

And no matter how long it takes Bea to eat, or how much she messes around, we have food to feed her, healthy food even, and we never have to hear her cry from hunger pains or look into her eyes and tell her we have nothing to give her.

And no matter how often an argument arises between Ike and I in the morning, there is always unending, unconditional love beneath it.

While walking into the library, an elderly man held open the door for Bea and I and told me that seeing us brought back memories of when his mother took him to the library when he was young.  This filled my heart with so much joy for him and with the hope that Bea will have these special memories when she is old and I am long gone.

While Bea was eating her snack, I put on my swimming suit to get ready to go to the pool and it smelled exactly the same way my swimming suit smelled when I was a kid.  I closed my eyes and I was 10-years-old again, swimming with my brother and sister at the Braman pool and riding in the boat with my family and James, Kay and Jenny Ryan, my hair whipping in the wind.

I got to cook a simple, healthy meal for my family and see the man I love the most caring so sweetly for our daughter while a new life moved around inside of me.

While Bea and I were reading on the couch, she said to me, "You're a good mama."

Surrounded by the beauty of our garden, we got to spend a quite evening outside just enjoying each other's company and breaking the stillness of our neighborhood with laughter.

When I get nostalgic for my own childhood, these are the kinds of moments that overwhelm me with joy and gratitude.  It's rarely the big events like our trip to Disneyland when I was little, and it's never the things we had or didn't have, that I look back on.  It's always the little moments with my loved ones: playing hide-n-seek after dark with my mom, my dad and my brother and sister; laughing in my grandparents' basement with my cousins; swimming at Drury with my friends; or riding bikes down a dusty, country road.

And I know, in 20 or 30 years it will be days like today that take my breath away, and I'm filled with gratitude for the chance to live a life that has and continues to give me these moments.