Boasting, or contentment. Maybe both.
This evening, Cook had a meeting/hanging-out session with one of the groups he volunteers with. I took this as an excuse to go out for dinner with the girls. They chose sushi, and they chose to bike there. Skipper has recently grown into a hand-me-down bike that still feels very large and dangerous to her, and she hasn't done much biking on the street, so this was kind of a minor big deal.
These are the things that happened:
1) The weather is absolutely gorgeous - a warm, glowingly sunny evening, with everything in full leaf and/or bloom.
2) When we walked in to the restaurant, a woman whom we've seen working there (and know to be a native Japanese speaker) greeted us in English, and Skipper said, casually and without being prompted, "Konnichiwa," and the woman politely returned her greeting but made no fuss about it, and when we left, Skipper said "Sayonara."
3) The girls liked ALL their food and nobody complained.
4) Duchess said dreamily, in conversation about her day and her future options for living in China, "Mom, I think I'm growing up."
5) All the way home, Skipper told us facts (and "facts"*) about ants.
6) The biking went very smoothly.
So there I was, biking home on a lovely evening with my lovely, safe, healthy children who are growing up, who are interested in many things, who want to know about ants and live in other countries, and we have enough money to go out for sushi sometimes and return to our comfortable, safe home where we have enough food and all the things we need, and everything just felt so idyllic that I felt completely peaceful about everything.
Of course, now I have to put Skipper to bed, so I will probably not feel so idyllic. But I did. I do. I remain very lucky.
*She says some ants eat the blood of cockroaches. While the ants in our house often bite my bare feet, I'm skeptical about the cockroach thing.
These are the things that happened:
1) The weather is absolutely gorgeous - a warm, glowingly sunny evening, with everything in full leaf and/or bloom.
2) When we walked in to the restaurant, a woman whom we've seen working there (and know to be a native Japanese speaker) greeted us in English, and Skipper said, casually and without being prompted, "Konnichiwa," and the woman politely returned her greeting but made no fuss about it, and when we left, Skipper said "Sayonara."
3) The girls liked ALL their food and nobody complained.
4) Duchess said dreamily, in conversation about her day and her future options for living in China, "Mom, I think I'm growing up."
5) All the way home, Skipper told us facts (and "facts"*) about ants.
6) The biking went very smoothly.
So there I was, biking home on a lovely evening with my lovely, safe, healthy children who are growing up, who are interested in many things, who want to know about ants and live in other countries, and we have enough money to go out for sushi sometimes and return to our comfortable, safe home where we have enough food and all the things we need, and everything just felt so idyllic that I felt completely peaceful about everything.
Of course, now I have to put Skipper to bed, so I will probably not feel so idyllic. But I did. I do. I remain very lucky.
*She says some ants eat the blood of cockroaches. While the ants in our house often bite my bare feet, I'm skeptical about the cockroach thing.
Comments
My local search engine tells me that there are Dracula ants in Madagascar that drink the blood of their young and that many ants seem to enjoy menstrual blood. The cockrophagia remains unproven, but I have high hopes for further e-digging.