Emmett orders me up so I sit up. I am waking up without my usual enthusiasm for the day. Nothing to worry much about--this happens sometimes without meaning anything. It's normal ebb and flow of feelings. I think about my mom, up every morning before the rest of the household. My hair is stupid, like a witch's, as we say in our house. I know I'll feed the kids cereal and toast for breakfast and I'll have tea and probably a square of the chocolate Bim brought me. He tries out different chocolates for me, which I like, but this time he picked Cadbury dark chocolate, which I don't like. Some chocolatiers do milk chocolate so well--or so iconicly--I actually prefer it to their dark afterthought. Still a good thing, albeit a poor breakfast.
The girls will be occupied until 9 because that's when I tell them the TV has to go off. Emmett will putter nearby trying on all the shoes and pulling books off the shelf. He reads to himself and it's all that charming gibberish you think you'll remember for the rest of your life, but it'll disappear by degrees with his charming older voice. One day he'll be tall and big and his voice will be deep and his arms will be strong and hairy and this little boy with his wide, leaning stance and smooth skin and drooling lower lip will only exist in photographs and video clips. Get those video clips! Forget living in the moment! This moment will disappear with my heart in the next 30 seconds.
Now I stagger around for a while without my contacts in while I drink my tea and make my bed. I'll follow Emmett out to the basketball hoop and watch him hurl a ball at it for a while, and then we'll change his diaper and go into his room where he'll sit at his little red desk and read me some more books. The tea will enter my bloodstream and I'll feel good again.
I won't say all is right with the world, because that's never true, but I know what that phrase is meant to mean. The uncomplicated happiness of right now, where we are.
