A Day Worth Remembering

It’s warm here in our little house tonight.  A/C went out completely this afternoon after struggling along for a few hours and giving me hope that it might just have been the filter.  Today we had Joshua’s truck engine repaired, and this weekend I had a meltdown about trying to make the grocery budget fit our reality.

It’s life, really.  Messy and complicated and full of mistakes that are only glaringly obvious when looking backward.  But it’s ours.  And sometimes it’s worth bottling up right now and keeping it just like it is.

I’d love to store all these precious little moments somewhere….the way they ate the strawberries as fast as I could cut them this afternoon on the back porch while they were dripping wet from the inflatable pool….when I asked Amelia what she did at VBS today and she said, “Well, we did NOT ride in the bye-bye buggy, but we did dancing with Mrs. Katie”…oh, baby girl, you and your friends are finally getting too big for that buggy and it makes me so sad….how Gus barked “arf, arf!” at the office dog today when we went to pick up Joshua…that Madelynne finally finished a chapter book she read all on her own….how Annabelle has taken to doubling everyone’s names, “Mil-Mil, Ma-Ma, Gus-Gus”….

It’s just random moments.  Everyday mundane, extraordinary only because these moments are so very ordinary.  I remember once telling my husband early in our marriage that I could live everyday reliving our perfect wedding day, and he told me he’d rather live over an ordinary day, a day when we actually were just together.

The older I get, the more I think about that.  How if I had to live just one day over, I’d choose the most ordinary of days, a day when we were just at home, just weeding the garden or playing in the water hose or drinking coffee at that beat-up kitchen table.  A day when naps were taken and pizza was made and the floor was swept a half-dozen times.  A day when I probably got a little exasperated, but got over it quickly enough to enjoy the silliness.  One of those days when there’s an afternoon rainstorm and a family movie and a whole lot of laundry that needs to be folded.

One of those days that’s just pulsing with everyday, ordinary life.  That’s the day I’d bottle right now and keep in my treasure chest of memories because these are the days that matter most.

Those are the days that remind me how passionately I am loved.