It is nearly midnight.
I just got home from a night filled with laughter and friends.
Craig has left the light on over the bar, where Katie’s completed homework sits, waiting to be tucked into her backpack in the morning.
Matthew’s Woody and Buzz Lightyear figures lay beside Katie’s homework, waiting for familiar 3-year-old hands.
Now I will close up my computer, lock up the house, turn off the lights and go upstairs to cover little bodies and slide into bed beside the one that waits for me.
This is joy.
These small things that make up this life that we’ve built.
Small remnants of moments lived and hints of more to come.
And I am so very grateful.
There are random moments – tossing a salad, coming up the driveway to the house, ironing the seams flat on a quilt square, standing at the kitchen window and looking out at the delphiniums, hearing a burst of laughter from one of my children’s rooms – when I feel a wavelike rush of joy. This is my true religion: arbitrary moments nearly painful happiness for a life I feel privileged to lead.
–Elizabeth Berg, The Art of Mending