Just Joy | king of the impossible

• At the playground, I'm pushing Mads in a swing, but fret aloud about the cold. He reassures me, his hair whipping around his face, "I love the cold. I love the wind. The wind makes me wild!"
• Twice in one day, at my grandma's house and then later my own, I coax cats to me--Doc Holliday at Grandma's house, small and black, Thorn Rex at mine, large and black. I call Doc in the ringing "kittykittykitty" I was taught as a girl; Thorn prefers to be meowed at in his own language. Both cats meet my finger tips with cold noses, they both lay at my feet and offer their bellies to be rubbed, both let me pick them up and nuzzle my face into their fur. 
• By intuition or chance, on a Tuesday morning, I dressed in a skirt and blouse with the optimal amount of swish and sway in their materials and then, on my afternoon dinner break from work, I walk to the neighborhood grocery store for a deli sandwich and the wind whips about me, playing in the folds of my clothes. I nod and smile to the residents of the surrounding townhomes and apartments as so many of them take advantage of this 70 degree winter day and walk the greenway path with groceries in their arms. I sit in the grass on a hill, take my shoes off, and know I look like a witch because I feel like one.
• 'It is Preschool Story Time at Eva Perry, and our letter of the day is 'W'. Ms. Mary pulls a wolf puppet out of her tote bag ('W' is for wolf), and we all--Ms. Mary, kids, parents, puppet--throw our heads back and hooowwwl.
• We're home for the evening, and I'm sipping a hard cider. At Mads' request, I put the Flash Gordon soundtrack on the turn table, then I sit and watch him perform an athletic dance, half kung fu/half ballet.
• I've put Mads to bed and have started washing dishes in the kitchen when I hear him up and in the hallway. As I walk him back to his bedroom he tells me, "You didn't give me a big hug." I pick him up and hold him against me, his arms and legs wrapped tight around me, his head tucked into the crook of my neck, and I rock with him until he tells me, "Okay Mommy, put me down now," ready to sleep. I lay him down, tuck the Star Trek blanket his dad sewed around him, and tell him I love him and goodnight.
• It is only five minutes before we need to be out the door; the car is warming, and I have yet to finish packing up my lunch, but I am riveted watching the new snail in the fish bowl in our kitchen. For the first time in the two days since bringing the snails home (two, one for each fish bowl), I'm seeing it move up the side of the bowl, sending out a long feeler and antennae. I watch it slide along the glass, then retract and shut its shell like a door when the blue beta swims close to investigate.
• I get into the car after work, and Mads asks for a knock knock joke. He laughs mightily over my "orange you glad to see me."
• I lift Mads out of the car, hold him on my hip and point to Venus in the sky. I say, "look at that big star," and Mads says, "lets wish on it."

"Flash's Theme," Queen