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Unexpected Bliss


I am elbows deep in dirty dishes in the kitchen sink, lost in my own thoughts while keeping time with Collective Soul, a CD played for the first time in what must be ages—loud, or loud in comparison to the usual silence. Two small hands reach around my waist from behind, squeeze in a little-boy hug with muscle to it. A hug that hangs on. I hadn't even heard my son enter the kitchen. Then his six-year-old voice tells me, a mom who feels on the edge much of the time: "You rock!" I do? I don't recall using that expression around my son, so I figure it's something he's picked up at school or at camp. This cool-kid slang invading my son's speech makes me smile. It's so unexpected. Also, I am instantly high on this praise. How did I earn it? Was it the ice cream base we just made together and put in the refrigerator to cool? Was it the music I put on? Or was it the promise of going outside once clean-up was finished so that we could squirt each other with water, chase around in the summer heat? Maybe all of the above. The memory is just hours old. We've added others in the course of the evening, too: finishing the raspberry ice cream (the best I've ever tasted; my son says it's because of "teamwork" and I don't doubt it), dancing in the living room, making a homemade pizza and tossing the dough in the air, shouting "Pizza Italiano!" for no reason other than to be silly. I wanted to write this down tonight, because although they're the most recent of memories—they may well be among the very best. Life is still unfolding, memories being made every minute.

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