A Few Smile-able Things

1. I've been working this morning on the copy edits to Dangerous Neighbors. I have a feeling that I'm going to be saying this a whole lot come 2010. But Egmont USA—the entire team—rocks.

2. The Christmas tree is up. I swear. It actually happened.

3. Part two of my interview with Serena Agusto-Cox has gone live. Boy, does that Serena ask good questions.

4. I am heading out the door right this very instant (truly) to collect my son from college, even though my hair is wet and there are at least 30 emails that I've yet to answer (I'm sorry!). Yes. The word is ecstatic.

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Text Message

It has become our habit—my son texting me at the end of his weekend nights to let me know how the evening's gone for him. It was his decision to begin this tradition, his way of giving me a certain measure of peace. Here I come, to this desk at 4 AM. There is the red message light, flashing.

He's got a gang of friends, this son of mine, and the news is always varied. When I read his missives off the tiny screen, I conflate his words with my own imagination.

Hey, Mom, reads the latest. Tonight was great. We pretty much stayed in but then we went to IHop at 2 in the morning. It was really fun.

So that I see him laughing. I see him with his backwards cap and his plate piled high with French toast and extra syrup. I see these friends around him—the guys and the girls—who call him by his nickname, Smooth, and who have become his second family. We live our lives toward so many goals. I live my greatest joys through him.

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Getting the Day Right

I have been the kind of person, throughout too much of my life, who measures the day by the progress that's been made—against deadlines, against expectations, against you name it.

I've tried to make the days count.

But today, after going urban pecs power and all, I decided to give myself the day off. Went shopping for an outfit. Went shopping for shoes. Took my beautiful boy out to lunch. Got my hair done. At four o'clock I was in the car, driving to the baptism of a baby girl who has a world of dancers head over heels for her, at least partly because her mom, Cristina, pictured here, had long ago danced her way into their hearts.

I did nothing all day but look forward to this—this gathering of friends in celebration of a baby and a marriage. And then it happened, then I came home, and all I wanted was more song, so I turned the music on. I stood at the screened-in door and watched the night begin. There were clouds. There were stars. There was a carousel of lightning bugs. I sang to the songs. I danced alone.

One more thing: The beautiful service that honored Cristina, her husband, Jeremy, and their baby was conducted—impeccably—by a man who later introduced himself as the husband of fellow blogger, Sierra Rix. Sometimes we bloggers slip out from our shadows. Sometimes we're just standing there as no one but ourselves.

I get so much wrong in this life, but today I got right. Today there was one measure: joy.

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The Measure of our Days

I spent Valentine's Day in the simple state of being. No reading. No writing. No client projects. No head bowed down toward work. Taking a small holiday for the mind and not stopping to count (as is my habit) just what I was achieving, not regretting that which I was not striking from my have-to-do-that list. There are no measures for the well-lived day. There are, instead, encounters—with old high-school friends, with the chocolate man at the farmer's market, with a father over lunch, with the waitress who remembers that you like your tuna rare, with a friend's long laughter on the phone, with the son who texts you from the heat of a college basketball game: Hey. Mom. We're winning.

Late in the afternoon we watched a movie. Dusk was falling when the opening credits rolled in and it was dark as the film slipped away. In between something had happened to the world outside—it had gone white and showy with enormous floating flakes, and there was a glow on those flakes, as if they were lit from below, as if the earth in winter is still somehow radiant. There was so much snow, and it fell so fast, and the flakes were so fat, and it was all so thick with beauty. I stood and I watched it coming. I took no photographs. Joy was the measure of my day.

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