The last couple of days have been filled with little things that make me happy. Just going home to Connecticut means visiting with aunts, cousins and a cantankerous 95-year-old grandmother that would stop speaking to me if I photographed her at this stage in her life.
It also includes a mandatory visit to the grocery store of my childhood, which happens to be the coolest place on the planet to buy food. I get a kick out of watching my kids make a beeline for their favorite items in a store that’s enthralled me from the first time I watched the milk go into the half gallon carton we’d later bring home.
We later enjoyed the comfortable hospitality of the aunt-in-law’s beautiful Brooklyn brownstone. That was actually not a little thing. Having a relative with the space to put us all up saved the expense of hotel for four people. Yay!
Come Thursday morning, we were back evaluating colleges in weather that teased us with threats of rain that thankfully never came. Cloudy-turned-to-sunny is another little thing that makes me happy.
I had the presence of mind to save my arthritic knees for pounding the pavement farther down the highway in Philadelphia and simply watched my boy wander around the Redmen’s Queens campus from the top of a very large stairway.
After fighting the insanity of New Jersey Turnpike traffic, we arrived fifteen minutes late for the last tour of our trip. But we managed to catch up with the groups just as they were leaving the auditorium and beginning the walk around the campus. Perfect timing – a little thing that often feels huge.
Another traffic battle through Philly’s rush hour brought us home to a water heater hose repair and more than an hour of separating preservable photos from the ones that had to be discarded. The upside, of course, was a visit with old pictures and warm memories.
Bottom line at the end of a whirlwind trip: it’s the little things that make for life’s big days!
Middle-Aged Martial Arts Mom 