"The Best Day in my Whole Life"

It's been a long day.

The phrase usually carries a negative connotation, but I was extremely glad and relieved to have a long day today.

A typical day for me (it's true confessions time) has me getting out of bed around 8ish, piddling around with things like hygiene, food and playing with waking children until 9:30ish, and then packing off somewhere, like the chiropractor, with my children. We come home, and I get maybe a solid hour to concentrate on something before thinking about getting ready for the noon Mass. Travel, parking, and Mass has us returning home around 1pm. I piddle a bit more while I get lunch ready, which we are often finishing around 2:30. We then get about 2.5 hours of concentration, which might also include errands, before I think about making dinner. We eat, piddle through the evening, and one by one my family members drop into bed, with me being the last, typically somewhere after midnight. Ok, maybe 1:30.

I realized the other day that this is driving me nuts. I feel like I am making meals, eating, or cleaning up from meals all day long and that my days all fly by so fast, with my grip on them loosening.

Today was different. I got up around 6:30, did my personal piddling. My daughter rose at about 7:20 and my son an hour later. My intention was to go to the 8 or 8:30 Mass, but opted for a late afternoon Mass instead (Noon Mass did not exist today), much to sleepy son's delight. But we were all dressed and breakfasted AND we finished the last chapter in Call of the Wild all before it was even close to chiropractor time. My son then became absorbed with Brain Pop, a nifty on-line learning website I discovered yesterday. I spent over two hours cleaning our disastrous basement while my daughter played there, which gave a huge boost to my sense of productivity and accomplishment. We all reconvened for lunch, I shared some treasures dug out from the basement with my son, and we talked, played together, did some more reading, baking, cleaning. I started looking at the clock. Golly! Only 4pm! I even had some time to just sit and rest. I read some more, and then we trekked out to Mass, made dinner, prayed together, erranded, played some more, and now bedtime has struck.

I don't normally blather on about minuscule and uninteresting details of my day, but this was a pretty big joy for me. The last time I felt this type of joy was Christmas day.

At one point I told my son I was just very happy about the way the day was going. He told me "Me too. I think this is probably the best day in my whole life, this far at least." It really was a day of joyful connecting, instead of scattered "going". This was exactly the gift I desired and needed today.