On Friday evening I took the kids out to dinner. It was a reward to Mark for good behavior in school. We sat out on the patio of the restaurant. Orange, red, and green trees dotted the mountains behind us. The temperature was perfect and the insects stayed away.
The new fountain drink dispenser-turned-constantly-flowing-water-feature entertained us as employees tried to fix it while still serving drinks.
We talked about the new piano teacher, ballet classes, and friends at church. I searched my purse for some cash to buy ice cream for dessert.
I looked at each of the kids, smiling and relaxed together. Paige shared a chair with Mark, Timothy curled up on his chair, and Daniel occasionally waved at friends who were inside the restaurant.
I said, “This feels perfect, just like the old days when we used to spend all day together.”
I have made it a point not to pine over the old days, so I added, “But even though things have changed, it’s a new kind of perfect.”
And it is.
The new kind of perfect is being able to sit outside at a restaurant for an evening meal. It’s classrooms and lockers, recess and cafeterias. It’s repairing old pipes and fixtures in our free time, enjoying our season tickets to BYU football games and gorging on Cougar tails. It’s falling asleep early each night because we’re so tired from all the new people and surroundings. It’s enjoying a backyard with shade, open windows in the house, and a sunny mudroom for laundry and lockers holding backpacks bulging with homework. It’s seeing family and feeling like we’re in the loop again with family news and events. It’s tears and fear, insecurities and new experiences, my mouth full of canker sores from the stress, all while being sheltered by a good house that creaks in the night. Of course it’s a mixture of emotions and reactions, but I know that perfection is something you create, not something that is handed to you. We’re making things work, just as we would anywhere. It does help that we feel like we’re “home,” though.
