I remember the happiest moment of my life.
It was May 2022 on a sunny-glazed afternoon.
My wife and I took our 4-year-old and 4-month-old to a nearby park. The one with the pond.
My insuppressible boy ran ahead as he always does. No one else was on the path. I let him go.
My swift-footed wife caught up to him with the stroller. My son picked up a fluffy dandelion. He blew the seeds into the wind. I stood on the path, pocked by sunlight breaking through the resurging trees of spring.
No asks. No wants.
And that’s all it was. It was a day like any other. Past the weddings. Past the births. Well past my 30th birthday.
I’ve tried to understand why these precious seconds stand out above all others.
Maybe the moment was defined as an absence of – a singularity of nothingness that allowed everything good and pure to take root. It blossomed into an unexpected rush of serenity, as if this was what life was all about.
Whatever it was, I held on for as long as I could. Then I started to walk.
Laundry
“Laundry” by Lera Lynn is simple and gorgeous:
Lynn found beauty in a place she never thought: folding someone else’s laundry.
It’s not the kind of love you envision in your 20s.
Everyone wants hope and sun,
But what I can supply
Is doing someone else’s laundry
Sitting, wondering why we’re alive.It’s cute when the young girls
Sing all sad and agonize
”Don’t you wanna hear
My midlife existential strife?”
It’s the saddest kind.
How is it, as you age, the simplest moments mean the most?