Just One of Those Very Good Days

It’s been a fine fallish evening with folks in black and orange cheering on the junior high boys on a long grass field at a small town school.  Dust from the gravel road clouds the home team’s sidelines on a stiff northwesterly breeze.  Yesterday’s weird orange wildfire fueled light has yielded to a textbook fall blue with wind driven whitetail clouds. Despite the cool temperatures, it feels like a corn drying day, like the husks are bleaching and corn is denting as our lips cry for chapstick and we pull our Wolves sweatshirts over our Wolves t-shirts, warding off a chill that is really still a month away.  

After a win, we stop for supper like football families usually do...tonight at the Joy Wok where we know Matt and Lizzie, in the Dodge Ram and 26’ trailer, will park as easily as Ann’s minivan with two sets of grandparents and a very hungry six year old.  “Oh I love this place!”, or words similar is what Josh has to say, even though he expressed doubts about “eating Chinese” moments before.  And, sure enough, the notion of instant Chinese buffet has occurred to more than one EA sports family as the Joy Wok fills table by table and the cooks bring fresh ribs and wontons and coconut shrimp.  Josh and Lizzie go back for more; we watch Josh to see what he thinks of his Sweet Sour Sauced bananas….

They disappear without a trace.  Who says little kids are unadventurous eaters.

Matt talks about their new home in progress.  Ann worries about two different business trips to Canada or Washington, D.C.  Millie continues the ongoing saga of the lone chicken.  Blake is on his phone to Ben concerning a notorious case. As Ann left us off at home, a big white moon lit the path to the back door.  We turned on the late West Coast feed of the Cardinals-San Diego and settled into our comfy chairs. I download the pictures from another year’s first football game.

Then I heard Frank Sinatra....

See, back in 1966, he had a hit with a song titled ‘It Was a Very Good Year.’  And that is the phrase I heard, not the lyrics, (look ‘em up and you’ll see what I mean  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydcUaTpiHgQ )

but the slow almost plaintive melody, the conversational phrasing, and the contemplative resolution of each stanza with, “It Was a Very Good Year.”

Why did Sinatra’s melody come to mind? Because tomorrow is one of those very good days:  Aaron’s 14th birthday!  This evening I threw my arm around his tall (and getting taller!)  shoulders and asked him what kind of doughnuts he prefers. Preschool doughnut delivery is our tradition and if Ann can scare up a candle, we will sing and even make Aaron blow it out first thing.  It was a very good evening when Annie and Matt brought over a small package for Ben to open years ago; it contained a box of Uncle Ben’s rice, a play-on-words gift that was a little too cute and too smart for these dumbfounded grandparents-to-be.  Once we came to our senses, it was all glorious excitement not just for our sake, but for our kids and the thrilling adventure that was to be.

If I were to catalog memorable days, certainly the births of our babies and the stories we tell of those days would be on the list.  But as memorable are the days we learned they were anticipated, that they existed, and were going to be loved all those days before we met them.  I cried when they stepped out in faith and were baptized in their church...and when they said their wedding vows in front of loved ones and friends.  Those were also very good days….

On the one hand are these landmark days that fill us to overflowing, make us fall to our knees, they are so overwhelming. On the other hand are wonderful times built of seemingly mundane moments that grab us by the throat, demanding our attention with little building blocks of joy, if we but notice them and measure their small happiness-es.

How could I ever choose a single best day from all these memorable, all these wonderful, all these miraculous, days?