a day of delights and the squeeze of a heart

I sat on a train, reading Ross Gay's "The Book of Delights", and I thought of the various moments of my day, each a delight.

In the morning, my youngest hauled a large suitcase to the train station to start her first week of theatre academy with a five day camp. The train station being five minutes down the street from our home I went with her to wave goodbye. I felt super proud and happy for my daughter to start her new adventure.

After work I took the train to the city to have a dinner with mom, dad and my oldest daughter, to celebrate my mom’s seventy-ninth birthday. 

The waitress in the restaurant was young and smiling warmly, and inquiring how we were doing and recommending black currant lemonade for a drink and bringing three forks to share the raw chocolate cake. She kindly brought my dad a clean napkin when he said he wanted it for his napkin collection from restaurants he visits with mom, a collection I didn’t know he had started and what seems like a memory collection, and  lovely one for a ninety-year-old man.

During the dinner my mom answered her phone to accept birthday wishes. She is a popular girl. Her social life is sometimes busier than mine and my sister’s combined. She has senior university lectures once a month, likes theatre and concerts, regularly visits the library, loves to go to cafes with her friends, and almost daily goes for long walks with a former colleague. 

My oldest took a BeReal photo with two of us smiling on one side and a snapshot of the two white haired (mom’s coloured blond and waved with a curler, and dad’s light silver, wildly thick hair) grandparents sipping lemonade through a raw macaroni straw from large one legged glasses.

The waitress gave us a receipt with a lovely message complimenting our good-natured demeanour and humour, the receipt decorated with twenty-something colourful ballpoint pen drawn flowers.

When my eldest had gone to her dance training, my parents and I hugged, and when they sat on a tram, we waved to each other through the tram window.

And from there I went to meet my middle daughter who arrived from another town to get the keys to an apartment she bought and her sister will stay in during the studies. Having some time until my train, we walked through an open air market and a creative city block, we talked about AI and art and the pleasure of starting a morning with a piece of cake.

Sitting on the train, thinking of the delightful moments, a day close to perfect, I felt my heart squeeze and my eyes swell, for somewhere inside me rose the knowledge that these kind of days are getting less likely to happen.