When all is right in your world

For as long as I can remember, anytime I find myself experiencing a purely wonderful moment, I try to memorize it - the sounds, the colors, the feelings.  As if I'm trying to stop time, wanting to make sure I can come back to it.  Because as most moments go, they disappear and move on to the next.

As a girl, during laughter-filled times with my family on holidays or birthdays or random gatherings where my dad made fajitas on a cool spring day, windows open and his music playing on the stereo - those were the moments I felt something you can't quite name.

It's a mixture of joy, contentment, security and peace.  Where all feels right in your little tiny world.

As a child, you know enough by this time to be aware of the fact that life doesn't always feel like that.  It doesn't always feel right.  Many, many things feel wrong or sad or hard, or so it was with my childhood.  And when the moments came that the skies parted blue and perfect and the sun would shine down on you, your family, your little world, you would notice and breathe it in and feel it deeply.

Many years later, I find myself doing the same thing.  Noticing and feeling deeply those moments where life can't get much better than this.

It can't get much better than sharing a meal with your family around the dinner table.  Where the baby defiantly refuses rice and sweet potatoes and instead makes you laugh with his growls and chatter.  Where your big silly boy plays with his corn and tells goofy jokes.  Where you and your husband exchange these knowing glances of, "How wonderful is this?  Our life, our family, these potatoes, you, us....all of this that we do together." 

Just like my little eight year old self, dancing around my living room reveling all that was right in my world in these perfect, fleeting moments, I still do the same thing. I let myself enjoy the moments - the sweet, quiet ordinary Thursday nights.  When we all have full tummies, a home to call ours, a family that we've built together - one that loves and plays and enjoys.

And maybe not all is right in the whole, big world, but all feels right in my very own.