This Moment

Where I'm In

We are staying in a glass and wood box next the UNC campus. It’s like being inside a mid-century diorama, and even though it’s not that big, I am still finding my way around it. We just arrived last night. After the drive from Connecticut we were shot and getting the wifi password and ordering dinner felt like as much as we could reasonably handle.

Of course we saw Henry. Our two-month-old grandson isn’t a bean in a blanket anymore, but an alert fellow who can lie on his stomach and look around. You can sing nonsense songs to him and he smiles. The long car ride and the fact I forgot to pack toothpaste matter not. There’s Henry’s chubby face on the edge of tears, or a grin. He doesn’t care if my breath stinks.

There’s stuff going on at school that is making me sad, but I am hopeful it will get sorted out. It needs to get sorted out, but I, the queen of dread, am trying to push it away from me for four days. The sun is coming up. The recycling guys have come and clattered and gone. This vanilla creamer from Wegman’s isn’t half-bad.

I was thinking when I got up this morning how I wish I could stay in the moment the way I was able to stay in the moment when I was playing with Henry last night. Staying in the moment has become a terrible cliché but I don’t know how else to put it, though I wish I did. But that’s exactly what it is; the immediate attention to this one thing without distraction, and in the moment you find yourself inside, there is joy. Sometimes I feel it when I’m writing, or running. Of course, with a baby, there is a purity and ease in it, because there’s no voice in your head, except the one whispering love love love.