The Reality

I am uninspired. There is no end in sight of laundry all. the. time. Dinners will need to be prepared and some nights it won’t be me, but mostly it will. . I think how they are acts of love, these mundane, everyday tasks. I try to breathe, and notice, and pray as I do them. But still, I wonder how many carrots I will chop in the next 15 years. How many times I will fold the same underwear. Match the same socks. It is not glamorous. It is not exciting. Sometimes I daydream about a large room made mostly of glass somewhere near an ocean where I can write and paint and move just as I like.

At the same time, I recently read a definition joy as something along the lines of: “The feeling of pure happiness that moves through the body like an electric current and lasts no more than 10 seconds.” I know this feeling, and I know I have experienced it in my life before children. . But never have I had a source for that sensation be so consistent, so sure, every time, as a kiss from my daughter. They are generally not spontaneous kisses; I ask for them. “Can I have a kiss?” She gets a light in her eyes and leans close, bringing her small warm face next to mine, and kisses my cheek or my lips or sometimes my forehead with just the right amount of pressure and moisture and a tiny sound. I know I will someday no longer be able to recall the softness of her skin now, the smell of her breath, the pattern of the sparse hair on her 2 year old head. And I won’t remember the thousands of baskets of laundry, the dishes prepared and eaten and gone. But I will remember that thrill that sparkles through me from head to foot when those kisses land. I will remember laughing out loud and asking for “More! More! More!” Until she laughs too and says, “That enough.” I will remember knowing, without a doubt, that this is my most favorite thing I have ever experienced in life.