A Mini-Success

After a pretty terrible week, after having slept for nearly 36 hours from Friday afternoon to Sunday morning–either because I was fending off the same flu that kept my eldest home all week, or because the stress and emotions and too-much-togetherness and noise of the week finally caught up to me–I woke up on Sunday feeling…well…human again.

Not only did feel human, I felt good.

It was the first night all week my eldest hadn’t awakened vomiting. It was the first night my youngest hadn’t barged in on us in the middle of the night complaining of a nightmare, or having wet the bed, or simply that he was “scared” (which means that he had at some point pushed all of his blankets off of himself and was actually “cold” and not “scared.”)

It was the first night our one remaining cat hadn’t yowled his way through the night, as if searching for his companion who had moved on to bigger and better catnip.

Yeah, a good night’s sleep can do wonders for the soul.

So, at some point, my eldest said, “Mama, let’s craft.” Which, of course, if you are an astute reader of my blog, is him asking me to speak in one of his Love Language: spending quality time. He has learned to ask for this in ways that will elicit a positive response from me, proof that learning to speak another person’s Love Languages is possible. I understood this request, and since crafting is one of the things I love to do, my reaction was, “Ooh! You don’t have to ask me twice!”

So he drew pictures of superheroes while I made Valentines. We were both sitting on the floor, working on the coffee table.

A few feet away from us, my indulgent husband was playing “Destroy” with my youngest scalawag. This idiosyncratic game consists of building Lego vehicles and then, as the name suggests, joyfully and enthusiastically, destroying them. I am never invited to play “Destroy” because, and I quote, “You don’t play it right.”

Everyone was in their element. There was sunshine pouring in the bay window. It was relatively quiet, except for the sound of pencil drawing superheroes, my scissors and the occasional hand searching through the bin of Legos for exactly the right piece.

I dared break the companionable silence.

“Hey. You guys?” I said, feeling stupid, since instants of quiet are few and far between. “This is a good moment.”

I glanced over at my husband, who has been hearing ad nauseum from me about the importance of mindfulness and noticing the good times so that they start outweighing the bad. He smiled. We both breathed in the sunshine and the quiet. We let the moment occupy eternity.

“You’re not playing!” shouted the youngest, bringing us all back to the present.