Embarrassingly Happy

This morning, Jason and Lucy danced around the house to Christmas music, still in their pajamas. I had been awake for a couple of hours with Lu — reading, banging cups together and pointing at the Christmas tree while she smiled and laughed. So by the time Jason got up, I was feeling pretty proud of us. And then their dancing started, and I sat at the counter like a fool, crying about how much I loved them. Not that it takes so much to make me cry anymore, but happiness is rarely the cause.

It's so embarrassing to admit — and maybe sad that I should be embarrassed by it. Yet watching Jason and Lucy dance around, I had the chance to alight on my life and witness something perfect: a taut bubble of sweetness that I wanted to grab and hold. Maybe it was just the fact that the house was clean. Could joy have just been buried under a few piles of laundry? Have I just been too busy to notice how good things are? But in that moment, against a tidy backdrop, the pedestrian worries and mundane shoulds fell away, and I was still. Feeling the perfection of my life. THIS, I thought, this is the exact corny feeling that people write songs about at Christmas.