Just Joy | your generator gens but your pistons don't work

• I am sitting at the dining room table with Mads early in the AM, before the sun has risen, shucking corn, listening to The Classical Station and Lunchbox contentedly chewing his kibble. I see out the kitchen window Wolfman's lantern traversing the yard and, then, the fire he builds in the backyard fire pit.
• It is the end of the day, and I've managed, with extreme patience and gentleness, to get Mads in his pajamas and ready for bed. He sits in my lap as we look at a pop-up book Grandma recently sent over to us, a book I remember from my childhood--Jan Pienkowski's Haunted House. We turn all the wheels, fold back all the cabinet doors, discover all the ghosts and black cats and dancing skeletons in the pages together.
• I ask to leave work early, and my request is immediately granted, and I am looking at a long weekend of my favorite holiday with my favorite people, though I hadn't planned for it, and I feel like a genie has granted me a wish.
• I am swinging at the playground, my little boy in the swing next to me being pushed by his dad, and the trees and sky are so beautiful, my menfolk so beautiful. It's warm out but not hot, and we are in the shade. My stomach keeps flipping.
• I am elbows deep in greasy pizza with Grandma, Ella, and my boy, and though I know my stomach will ache later, I am so happy in this moment, and this is totally worth it.
• Mads and I are tidying his room up, getting ready for bed, and I hear Wolfman singing along to the radio from the living room. He is singing "Lets Dance" in his best Bowie voice, so Mads and I rush into the living room to dance.
• My men have let me sleep in an extra hour before waking me by climbing into bed with me and snuggling close--Wolfman, Mads, and the dog, all piled under the sheets next to me.
• Wolfman and I are alone in the house unexpectedly, our sonshine spending the day with Grandma. My love is sitting close to me on the sofa holding my hand, which he picks up to examine. He presses my thumb between his two thumbs to compare sizes and tells me, "Your fingers are so tiny," and I am reminded of the night we first kissed, when he held my hand and expressed awe at how beautiful he found it. I'm rather fond of my hands, myself, but I think because he was fond of them first.
• I am riding in the trunk of the car, not entirely comfortably, staring out the window at sky and tree tops. Periodically, Martigan calls back to me, "How are you doing back there, Mommy?" And, "Look at that sky, Mommy!" a sentiment of awe I've expressed to him thousands of times during the course of his life so far. It feels so good to hear him repeat it back to me.

"Surfin Dead," The Cramps