It feels odd to sit on our new toilet seat. I was used to the one with the broken hinges, such that using the facilities meant this kind of gentle balancing act at the same time. But Ralph replaced the seat yesterday. I’d been holding off because I had no idea how much they cost – forty bucks? A little less? Ralph picks up the nicest one in the place and it’s $7. So we could have been sitting on a good seat these last weeks.
One of my favorite lines from a film – Olympia Dukakis in Moonstruck, speaking drily to a womanizing cad: “What you don’t know about women, is a lot.”
What I don’t know about Life, is a lot.
The kids and I are out on a walk. I have voice control over my dog which feels immense. He trots ahead of me by about three feet, swinging back to watch me now and then. Sometimes he falls right back at my side. He no longer gallops off to eat horrible things that make him very ill and affect our pocketbook.
It feels good to have made a difference.
So the kids and I are walking and the wind is blowing. The wind blows the braid-crimps right out of my son’s hair and turns it into spun gold and honey. The wind is strong, but it feels perfect. Soon the rains will come again and I’ll miss these perfect balmy summer nights. Already: the days, getting shorter.
Footfalls on the rocks. I am tired from poor sleep but I know I can walk alongside my children and be in the moment. I can walk without checking my phone – probably because I meditated this morning. The children are, themselves, far more delightful company than I – always. They still notice the right things to notice: they find a snakeskin, they comment on the length of the grass, the blackberries. They find a new fuzzy caterpiller in a vibrant citron hue I’ve never before seen.
It is amazing to me that they do not get bored or tired of the really wonderful things, the small things. The minutiae. Those things that really matter.
