{"id":2556,"date":"2013-09-09T20:20:48","date_gmt":"2013-09-10T00:20:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.katrinakenison.com\/?p=2556"},"modified":"2013-09-09T20:20:48","modified_gmt":"2013-09-10T00:20:48","slug":"small-moments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/small-moments\/","title":{"rendered":"Small moments"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"BIO<\/span>
\nk,\u201d I said to my family, \u201cI have a question.\u201d<\/p>\n

We were halfway through dinner at my parents\u2019 house in Maine.\u00a0 The sun was setting, casting the room in molten, amber light.\u00a0 The table was littered with lobster shells and corncobs and wadded up napkins: the perfect ending to a perfect end-of-summer day.<\/p>\n

No one could remember the last time we\u2019d all been gathered together in this place we love, a place layered with memories and history and hallowed artifacts.\u00a0 Twenty-six years ago this week, my husband and I were married in the church at the head of the cove. \u00a0We began our life together in the bedroom off the kitchen (repainted by my mom and dad in honor of the occasion) \u2013 the room where we still sleep when we visit and where my wedding dress still hangs in the back of the closet. Our sons spent all the best vacations of their childhoods at \u201cNana and Bapa\u2019s Maine house.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even now, the books they read as children are stacked on the bedside table between the twin beds upstairs.\u00a0 Winnie the Pooh sits in silent meditation upon a pillow; the old board games are piled neatly on the shelf; the sea glass and smooth stones they collected line the windowsills.<\/p>\n

And yet, time and summer jobs and new interests and horizons have their way with all of us. Life doesn\u2019t\u2019 always carry young adults back \u00a0to their best-loved places.\u00a0\u00a0 But over Labor Day weekend, with both boys home, we seized our chance. \u00a0And for one night, my parents and the four of us were under one roof.<\/p>\n

Of course, everyone knew what was coming: Mom was going to ask the family to reflect<\/i>.<\/p>\n

My dad rolled his eyes.\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s a nice meal,\u201d he said, only half-joking.\u00a0 \u201cDo we have to make it meaningful?\u201d\u00a0 The kids laughed.\u00a0 Steve said, \u201cYou can\u2019t stop her, you know.\u201d\u00a0 And in fact, no one really tried.<\/p>\n

What I wanted to know was simply this:\u00a0 What moment from the summer are you especially grateful for?<\/p>\n

T<\/span>hrough all the years of our sons growing up, we asked \u201cthe gratitude question\u201d at the dinner table at least once a week.\u00a0 Passing was always an option, but I don\u2019t remember a single time that any of us actually chose to opt out.\u00a0 There were plenty of \u00a0\u201cterrible, horrible, no good, very bad days,\u201d as we used to call them, quoting the shaggy-haired, put-upon Alexander in Judith Viorst\u2019s beloved children\u2019s book<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0 But even at the end of one those days, it was usually possible to dredge up some small moment worthy of a smidgen of gratitude.\u00a0 (A Jack classic:\u00a0 \u201cI saw a toad.\u201d)<\/p>\n

But last Saturday, as the golden light faded from the sky, we were all feeling pretty expansive. \u00a0Gratitude was easy.<\/p>\n

Jack talked about an August afternoon he\u2019d spent at the beach with a best friend from childhood, whacking rocks into the ocean with a stick.\u00a0 They did it for hours, this impromptu home-run derby, till they couldn\u2019t lift their arms anymore, or swing the stick one more time. \u00a0Nothing special, really — except that of course it was.<\/p>\n

Henry told us about the final night of his summer job on the Cape, sitting at the piano with a friend at 1 in the morning, the two of them playing and singing their favorite Bruce Hornsby song together one last time before going their separate ways.\u00a0 Not a big deal, perhaps, at the end of a summer full of opening nights and performances and drama.\u00a0 Except that it was.<\/p>\n

Steve, who has never had any interest in joining me for chilly early morning swims, decided this year that if I was going to start every morning of our August vacation by jumping out of bed and into the lake, he would do it too.\u00a0 His favorite moment?\u00a0 Swimming through the dark cold shadows, all the way out to the place where the rising sun is just hitting the water at dawn. I\u2019m with him on this.\u00a0 There is nothing quite like greeting the day by diving into it and swimming toward the light.\u00a0 A small ritual, yes, but precious now to both of us.<\/p>\n

My dad, who spent all of last summer wondering if he would ever recover from a debilitating slipped disc in his back, is so relieved to be able to move around again that he had a hard time choosing just one pain-free moment to be grateful for.\u00a0 At seventy-eight, he wasn\u2019t at all sure he\u2019d ever regain the ground he\u2019d lost. Little wonder that fixing the roof last Saturday made him so happy.\u00a0 \u201cI was up and down that ladder fifty times today,\u201d he said. \u201cI couldn\u2019t have done that a year ago.\u201d\u00a0 Not a big deal, perhaps.\u00a0 Except that, of course, it is.\"Dad<\/p>\n

W<\/span>ell, my life isn\u2019t very dramatic at all,\u201d my mom began.\u00a0 \u201cBut this moment meant a lot to me.\u201d\u00a0 She had been watering her garden with the hose, she said, when a hummingbird appeared — so close she could have touched it — and then hovered there, thrumming its wings just at the outer edge of the spray.\u00a0 She didn\u2019t move; the hummingbird didn\u2019t leave \u2013 it was the two of them, suspended in time, eyeing each other.\u00a0 Just a moment, really, nothing dramatic at all.\u00a0 But, as my mom said, \u201cIt meant a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

It probably doesn\u2019t surprise you that what struck me most as we went around the table was how utterly simple each of these memories are.\u00a0 A moment shared with a friend.\u00a0 A swim at dawn.\u00a0 A day of work without pain. An encounter with nature. The kinds of moments available to most of us all the time. But also the very moments that are so easy to miss in our busy, wired, distracted lives.<\/p>\n

At my parents\u2019 house last weekend, there wasn\u2019t a lot to do.\u00a0 We read books, took walks, made meals, cleaned up after them.\u00a0 I spent time alone at the water\u2019s edge with each of my sons, and we did exactly what we\u2019ve always done there \u2013 climbed on rocks, played with rocks, made piles of rocks, collected rocks, skipped rocks.\u00a0 We talked about everything and nothing.\u00a0 We watched the sky and felt our hearts grow calmed by the sea.\"rock<\/p>\n

O<\/span>n Monday, we cleaned the house, changed all the beds, and loaded our stuff into the cars, Steve and Henry in one, me and Jack in the other.\u00a0 I drove home in an epic traffic jam through pouring rain, stopped at the farm stand for some groceries five minutes before it closed, threw all our dirty clothes into the wash, and made some vegetable soup for dinner. \u00a0Four of us at the kitchen table, just as we were for years and years \u2013 and as we are so rarely now.<\/p>\n

All week, with summer officially over and yet with both sons still home for a little while more, I\u2019ve been thinking about what I most want them to take away when they leave again \u2013 Henry on Friday for a job in Minnesota; Jack, at the end of the month, for school in Atlanta.\u00a0 I\u2019d hoped for this \u201ctogetherness\u201d time to be special, of course.\u00a0 And I\u2019ve looked forward all summer to these days in early September, when we would have some unscheduled time just to enjoy each other.<\/p>\n

Things haven\u2019t gone quite as I planned. Last Wednesday morning I woke up with a toothache that quickly went from uncomfortable to painful to excruciating.\u00a0 For me it\u2019s been a week of dental visits, curling up on the couch under a blanket, counting the hours between painkillers, sipping liquids through straw, and going to bed hours before anyone else. Not the memorable \u201ctogetherness\u201d I\u2019d envisioned.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s also been a week of moments I will remember:\u00a0 Henry doing the grocery shopping and making dinner, including a killer blackberry hazelnut cobbler, the very last solid food I was able to eat.\u00a0 Steve and the boys gathered round the TV in the kitchen, switching channels from the Red Sox to the U.S. Open.\u00a0 Jack preparing ice packs for me and tucking them around my cheek.\u00a0 The guys doing the dishes together, meal after meal.\u00a0 My sons have taken care of me over the last few days with all the tenderness and compassion I could wish for.\u00a0 In the meantime, they’ve happily gone about their lives here — taking runs, playing basketball, going for bike rides, seeing friends, feeding the dog, working for their dad to earn some extra cash.\u00a0 And no one really needed me to do anything to make it \u201cspecial.\u201d<\/p>\n

What do I want my young adult children to take away with them into their own next chapters? \u00a0Maybe just this, the simple life instructions they already seem to have learned:\u00a0 Be kind.\u00a0 Pay attention. \u00a0Do what needs to be done. And remember that the little things, the small moments, aren\u2019t so little after all.\u00a0 They are the texture and the truth of who we are and what we care about.<\/p>\n

\n

An update on my walk. . .<\/span><\/h3>\n

I did it! \u00a0Thanks to antibiotics, protein smoothies, Ibuprofen, and my dad (who is also my dentist), I was able to walk on Sunday with Team Diane. \u00a0Thanks to YOU, I not only made my fund-raising goal, but exceeded it. \u00a0More on all of that later. \u00a0In the meantime, know that I am deeply grateful for your encouragement and support. \u00a0We had a spectacular day and our group of 27 determined walkers raised over $35,000 for Diane’s Fund, all of which will go directly to support ovarian cancer research at Dana Farber.<\/p>\n

If you missed my blog post about my friend Diane, and why I support the Jimmy Fund Walk and this work, you can still \u00a0read it here<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

O k,\u201d I said to my family, \u201cI have a question.\u201d We were halfway through dinner at my parents\u2019 house in Maine.\u00a0 The sun was setting, casting the room in molten, amber light.\u00a0 The table was littered with lobster shells and corncobs and wadded up napkins: the perfect ending to a perfect end-of-summer day. No […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15183,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,27,30,5,35,8,9,14],"tags":[198,379],"class_list":{"0":"post-2556","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-at-the-table","8":"category-family-life","9":"category-gratitude","10":"category-hearth-home","11":"category-letting-go","12":"category-parenting","13":"category-parenting-boys-parenting","14":"category-soul-work","15":"tag-gratitude-2","16":"tag-small-moments","17":"entry"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/600x600.png?fit=600%2C600","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2556"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2556\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}