Some days, the best thing that can
happen for my soul is seeing a familiar face in a different place. Same
familiar face. Entirely different place. Ah.
Take today, for example. I had lunch
with my wife in a setting that wasn’t our home. What’s the big deal, you ask. Let
me tell you. It doesn’t happen very often. Not nearly as much as I’d like. It’s
understandable why. We have a four-year-old. Before that, we had three other
children who had various needs to tend to. On top of that, we both work in
fairly stressful occupations. We’re both busy with appointments, driving here
and there, meeting obligations (many of which aren’t our own), keeping the
peace, re-establishing the peace, mending wounds, buying groceries, cleaning
floors, surviving. We both move in a million different directions at the same
time seemingly each and every day. Such is life.
So, when the world slows down just long enough
so that our days can collide in the same vicinity that isn’t our house, I take
great joy in the rare opportunity and in basking in the unfamiliar
surroundings. I take great pleasure in not being interrupted by whatever child
should happen to enter the room with a need more pressing then our own. I take
great happiness in being able to make direct eye contact with my wife without
piles of dirty dishes or the furry tails of too many pets or broken crayons or heaping
mountains of unwashed laundry obstructing the view. I take great delight in for
at least an hour, not dealing with the mundane, ordinary, and commonplace. I
revel in it. It’s amazing how serene and peaceful and exciting the simple act
of picking up a perfectly crinkled, deliciously salted French fry and placing
it in my mouth while listening to the grownup words coming from the mouth of an
adult I love to be with can be.
This may very well turn out to be a
perfectly uneventful day (which isn’t all bad considering the possibilities,
many of which I’ve previously experience and lived through), but days like this
in which I get to spend an hour alone, unencumbered, unhinged, and under no
demands, with the person I decided a long time that I wanted to spend my life
with doing exactly this is good living in my book. I’ll gladly take it.
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