A Good Kind of Tired

I drove down to my mom's yesterday to make a meal. 

One of those old family recipes that's a lot of work to do well, but is so worth it. 

I went shopping yesterday for ingredients and spent the day today cooking after an early morning Zoom meeting for work. I cut flowers from my mother's garden. Mom and I set a beautiful table, chilled a nice bottle of wine, and waited for my uncle and cousin to arrive. The four of us sat around the table, enjoying conversation and good food.

My cousin is also a good friend. We've hiked the desert together and have sat on a bluff far above the Pacific Ocean at a beautiful spa, watching the movement of ocean, sky, and clouds. This is the first time we've seen each other since before Covid began, so another reunion this week like the one I had with my daughter last week. 

She moved to California six years ago, and the distance has made us more intentional about seeing each other and planning adventures. Getting together today got us thinking about more adventures.

I'm not quite ready to start flying around yet. I'm thinking about the next wave of variant-related Covid spikes and the resulting effects on life that seem inevitable with low vaccination rates and exuberant efforts to return to normal. I continue to step carefully through the changing landscape.

And now, I'm relaxing after a day well spent before having to drive home again tomorrow. I'm so tired I could cry, but it's a good kind of tired and they'd be happy tears.

A Hundred Days of Happiness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and every year brings new wonder. She asks big questions of the small things in life.