I cannot imagine a world without my wife nor my daughter.
I cannot imagine a world without good music. How about red and purple sunsets? Don’t forget butter on warm crunchy baguettes. Not just good music, but pounding sweaty live music. That first or even second album in a small little club. Having your new favorite artist lean down to kiss you on top of your head at the end of a show because you are groovin’ so hard and know all the words.
I cannot imagine a world without kindness and children playing silly games only they understand. Cool shade on a hot sunny day. Warm sunny spot in the living room on a cold short winter afternoon. Pictures and video and written accounts are magical as well.
I need my musty earthy mineral-y big bold red blends and peaty chewy scotches. Did I mention buttery butter on crunchy eternally perfect stone hearth bread? Is there really anything more satisfying than good bread dipped into homemade soup? If you have never really made homemade soup stop reading this and gather onions, carrots, and celery. You are halfway there. It is bulletproof. It may just save your life!
Lifelong friends. Remember racing around with me on the playground in those perfect days before obligations and responsibilities, before puberty? Knowing the allowable boundaries riding your bike relentlessly down and around the corners. Weddings and graduations and barbecues and road-trips and day drinking and staying up late eating popcorn engrossed in needlessly scary derivative films? And dry Januaries and this year dry Mays!
I could not survive without warm baths and cold bubbly water with lemon. Feelings of purpose or at least safety and acceptance. Easter eggs in movies and hearing :”your song” on a warm summer evening….will the sun ever go to bed? Good deals on needed items and good news on the nightly report. Laughing, anyone, everyone, belly laughing! Making new friends that you will never see again but know you would be good friends with spending many many hours together if you didn’t live on different continents.
Feeling hungry and getting to finally go to the bathroom after a long bus ride. Running into someone on a mountain hike who says he has read your blog and liked it! Yes this actually happened once, it made my month!
Sitting in silence. Loading a car’s worth of groceries into the freezer and fridge and pantry and feeling safe and blessed and slightly guilty at the same time. Having your mind wander for the ten billionth time while trying to simply breathe with a focused empty mind. Can’t wait for ten billion and one; each one is an opportunity to practice! Getting a good grade on a test or review. Getting a bad grade but knowing that it will be okay and that you are safe and loved and have so many opportunities and couldn’t possibly know the best path, even if one were to exist!. Discovering or re-discovering your faults and being okay with them because they help make you you and are in constant flux and change anyway..
Love, and love, and more love. And lots of fresh creamy melty butter!