this perfect day

if you too suck at interpreting memes then maybe you can take some comfort here as well

Yesterday Chris texted me a screenshot of a meme that was a stick figure pencil drawing of two big smiling faces with another smaller smiling face in between. It was captioned: my son’s drawing of “safe”. It was coupled with four of Chris’ own crying face emojis. I replied the way that I generally do when someone sends me a meme and I worry about the accuracy of my interpretation in relationship to the sender’s anticipated response, and said “I don’t get it”. And that is true, I didn’t entirely get it, or at least wasn’t positive in my ability to pick up his intended meaning. Thankfully he is generous with me when it comes to these foreseeable lapses and simply shot back with “just how the littles love snuggling mom and dad; brief.” With yet another crying face emoji. We go through a lot of those.

And yet… Last night, I got home from a booster club meeting, Chris was finishing putting Freddy to bed, and Eider was sprawled out on the couch watching lacrosse highlights. We will often circle up once Freddy is asleep and watch a show together. Eider moves over to the smaller sofa and Chris and I spread out on the couch. But last night, Eid asked me to snuggle him on the couch and when Chris came back downstairs he sat in his usual spot and there we were, mom and dad with our bigger than both of us son sprawled in between and on top of us. I said to Chris then that we were, in fact, recreating the pencil sketch from earlier or in other words “Would you look at that I guess you were wrong after all”. It was crowded and cozy and so very lovely. I massaged Eider’s legs and feet far past the capacity of my thumbs and even that was delightful.

I often wonder if that is sometimes the case, that it is us who give up on a particular childhood sweetness and not always our kiddos. I am nearly positive that if given the chance to snuggle with both of her parents and watch a movie, Maple too would more often than not jump at the opportunity. We read aloud every night to both Maple and Eider well into both of their double digits and as much as I hate to admit this I do not really recall how it came to an end with either. Was it them? Or was it me? More than likely it was some combination of both and about that, I am a little saddened but in a way that is laced with both gratitude and forgiveness for the natural end of such special seasons of closeness and connection.

These are the breadcrumbs that I continue to track and pick up as I orient around the continued need to both parent and be parented as we age and grow. The need presents differently with teenagers and young adults, but it isn’t gone. I can still feel the drip of oxytocin across my brain when I’m snuggled up with my grown and growing kids in much the same way I did when they were squishy little nurslings. There is a certain attention to detail that I am unearthing as the meaning-making thread that travels through the parenting timeline. Or rather, the living timeline, parent or not. The delight that is a near-constant potential in each small detail of living is what I am orbiting around, no matter how nostalgic I may sometimes be for years gone by.

Last week Friday, before the holiday weekend but still a bonus day off, Chris and the boys and I went to the gym and worked out together and then hopped over to the reservoir for what was quite possibly our last brisk swim of the summer. We came home to make burgers and set a campfire and after we ate and were all circled watching the fire, Eider said that it was pretty much his perfect day. In fact, he said, one of his first short writing assignments in his sophomore English class was to write about his perfect day and it was essentially the day we had just had. Family gym time. A swim in a gorgeous place. Burgers. A fire. Connection. Satisfaction. Gratitude. And I was just so inspired and impressed that our kid, when given what for many could be interpreted as a sky’s the limit assignment described instead an incredibly repeatable day as his version of perfect. This is what it is all about for me. This ability to see the grace and bounty of what is. Right here. Right now. Completely at hand and repeatable.

Life feels full to overflowing with these sorts of opportunities. More and more the older I get more and more this is the juice. And if this is the legacy we get to hand over to our children that is a pretty fine inheritance indeed.

It is campfire season here on this hillside. I am finishing writing this in front of the fire Chris and Freddy just set. The trees are beginning to tip deep red and flame orange and everything continues to rush forward into its inevitable change. It is equal parts grief over what once was, thrill over what might be, and gratitude over this precise moment. This is the heart of my practice and the mechanism of our lifestyle. Simple, imperfect, abundant. When I think about what we are working toward as a family, as a couple, it is simply to maintain this precise opportunity for as long as we are able. No grand once-in-lifetime reaching. But this awareness and wonder of the sheer magic of being and loving ourselves and one another. This home. This heart. This connection. This lifestyle of gratitude. This perfect day.