This Day

"Jim! Jim! How are you this day?" Sam shouts, as he runs barefoot down the steps and into the driveway to greet his best friend. Jim swoops him up in a hug and they laugh together.

"How am I this day?" Jim repeats the question, charmed by it. "I'm good this day, really good," he answers.

This day. I like those words, I like them very much. This day is, after all, all that really exists.

Within this day I am tired, sluggish, bland, and so glad it is a Jim day. Sam takes His Jim by the hand and runs away with him to the back yard, where they spend an hour throwing dinosaurs into the wading pool and then into the swing. After lunch, when they invite me to watch, I am astounded at Sam's accuracy of aim.

On days like this, when I am so very tired, I often feel the weight of my own failure. But not this day. This day I remember the Art of Allowing. This day I remember to simply be--tired or not tired I just am what I am. I remember that I don't have to create a constant flow of interesting activity for Sam. I don't even have to get up out of bed. If I am OK--if I just am wherever I am, Sam is generally OK, too.

In the afternoon we read from a fun dragon finger puppet book we found at the thrift store. I make voices for the two headed dragon, who asks Sam to hop like a kangaroo and clap like a seal. And he does, and he falls in love with this dragon and spends what seems like an eternity talking to it, showing it all the things he can do with animal sounds and movements (so many!), jumping in and out of the book, tickling the dragon, kissing it and saying how happy he is to meet him this day.

This day I rest from lunch until dinner and Sam and I cook together, and even when he breaks down in tears because he can't get all the corn into the pot, and would rather do what I'm doing, which is tending to a pan of boiling hot oil that I don't feel he's ready to approach, we are OK. And beyond that, as the lovely Josha Grant points out, it is not even necessary to be OK. It is only necessary to be.

To be in this day.

And in the evening as we take our sunset walk in the desert, Sam is Mr. Scrooge and I am Jacob Marley. Sam walks into the warm evening wearing a t-shirt, no bottoms or shoes, a black tophat and a glittery batton for a cane and I pretend to drag my chains along with me. We talk about what the chains symbolize but mostly Sam would rather whack things with his stick--we look for bits of old tin and rocks to whack. And we smell the flowers, those few determined golden blossoms sprouting up out of the crusty desert floor. They smell of suntan lotion and remind me of miracles and I love them.

And as this day ends, we walk home together, Sam and me, Scrooge and Marley, hand in hand under the fading evening sun. Both tired now, we kiss the daddy good night, snuggle into our bed and fall asleep together, unwashed, uncombed, undefined, undetermined, unschooled, unchained, uninterested in all the many things we 'should' have done.

Because, after all, this is the day the lord hath made, we shall rejoice and be glad in it.