January Second Twenty Ten

As I sit on the sofa watching the snow gently fall, I am reminded that I wasn't supposed to be sitting here in this spot. I was supposed to be sitting on the sofa in my mother's living room 400 miles from here. I would have been doing the same thing, drinking coffee, skimming through a magazine that had been on the coffee table, and watching the snow fall. The difference is that I would have been sharing the moment with mother as we chatted about the latest happenings in our lives. Instead, it is me and Bailey, whom our granddaughter proclaims to be her dog, and Bailey's not talking. But as my husband verbalized yesterday while I was thinking it, we have to stop thinking about what could have been, and go forward.

As it turned out we had one of our best New Year's Days ever. I was out of bed by 6:30 which is sleeping in for me on a day off. At 7:00 I was at the grocery store to buy a pork roast to put in the slow cooker with sauerkraut for our traditional good luck dinner for the New Year. Does it work?????????? I don't know. I suppose I could imagine what things may have been like if we hadn't dined on pork and sauerkraut each New Year's Day. The menu was rounded out with steamed yellow beans, applesauce, baked potatoes (washed and rolled in kosher salt, yum), carrot sticks and raw yellow beans with dip, and apple pie (baked by our oldest daughter) for dessert. A rather monochromatic plate, but the green beans didn't look healthy. Our day was shared with our two daughters, our son in law, our 3 1/2 year old granddaughter, and my husband's brother. We had a tranquil afternoon spending time together and enjoying each other's company, a joy we wouldn't have known had we traveled those 400 miles.

One of the memorable moments of the afternoon was when, for a few seconds, we didn't know where our granddaughter had disappeared to. She likes to play hide and seek. We found her in our bedroom which is downstairs, neatly tucked under the covers holding one of my earrings. When we went into the bedroom, she flicked at the earring and very solemnly said, "I miss my Mommy". When her Mommy went into the bedroom, and said, "I'm right here." She said, "I miss my Daddy". Later in the afternoon she was referring to us a family of hippos. She colors our life like we never could have imagined.