a string of good

I see my friend after several weeks’ time.  She makes coffee, I bring olive oil cake swirled with blueberry jam, we sit on her porch.  It’s a perfect summer morning, a perfect way to begin the week.

The rest of the week is good too, though busy.  My writing project is challenging my brain in new ways and my heart, at moments, is slow to follow, but follow it does, and the tender bits warm, expand, receive.  The team I’m working with is wonderful, the people I’m meeting are amazing, I could not ask for a better experience right now.

The other day, I write a list of to-dos in my tiny notebook.  In my journal, I make another list, perhaps a truer list, of what I want and need to do that day.  The list reads: write | maybe dust + vacuum | walk outside | love (everyone, and all).  The second item remains undone at day’s end.  I consider it a good day.

I pick my daughter up from work, running inside to get milk, eggs, blueberries, cherry tomatoes, a bar of goat milk soap.  It’s the sweetest store, small, and full of locally grown food and handmade goods.  The people who work there are kind and caring.  I love that my daughter is with people like this at her first job.

My son helps me on a house project and, though it’s not a fun project per se, it is so fun to be with him, to work with him, to help each other.  He is quick and smart, sometimes impatient, but works hard.  What we do together in an hour’s time would have taken me two, at least.  Plus, we laugh.  I consider it another good day.

When I go out to mow the lawn, I walk by the garden, always a bit tentative, afraid that something might be struggling considering I don’t have the greenest of thumbs.  But all seems well and the four o’clocks are blooming, self-seeded from last summer.  It never fails to astonish me when plants reappear year after year.  I understand the concept of seeds, mind you.  Still, I am astonished.

This busy week, in truth, has been a string of good days.  Not all happy and easy, but good.  Stretching limbs and mind and heart.  Receiving help and lessons and love.  A string of good days within the span of a good week within the container of a good life.  I have much for which to be thankful.

Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies,
those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world.
~ John Milton ~