Treasure

It's a good kind of tired.

I spent the day with my daughter, her last day before flying back to Chicago. She offered to help me move boxes from the storage unit to my new office. She's such a treasure. My son usually helps me. He's treasure too.

He's settling into new responsibility in his work and hasn't been able to get the time yet to come up here, so she thought she'd help us both out. Believe me, it's a job. But not as bad as she thought it would be, she said, so that makes it an even more precious offer.

Really, it was only a tiny part of the day. Two trips over and back. I was able to park right next to the door, on the grass, and I'd found a dolly to help get the boxes from the car to my office. We spent most of the day just talking and laughing together. We have a special place we've gone for lunch or dinner since she was a teenager, and we drove up river to have lunch there. So glad we did. It was perfect. 

Then the long drive down I-95 through Philadelphia rush hour traffic to the airport. Only, there was no traffic in our direction. It was stunning. There was no anxiety about getting there on time. Massive hugs before I let her go, wishing I could keep holding on. Forever.

I drove back north and decided to go over to my office to keep my mind off the good-bye. Unpacked most of the boxes and got most of the books on the shelves. I am ahead of the game with that. I've got meetings tomorrow, so it's good to have the space clear and ready to receive people.

When I finally dropped what was in my arms as I came into my apartment, I felt every inch of the exhaustion of the day. Thought I'd better write before I'm too tired to write more than three sentences. I am grateful for the tiredness of this day. It's a happy kind of tired.

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 each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life..