Brilliance

Gramma used to call my brother and me her little day brighteners. We’d run over to her house, eat her candy, play endless card games, listen to her recreate the old Main Street (back when times were good), and make Grampa laugh until he cried. They were the best times. Love and sweetness and warmth and laughter. And a little guilt about not running over more often, but not too much. And the candy made that better, too.

Christine brings me back to those times. Each lesson she tells me more about her children and her grandbabies, who are brilliant and perfect and no trouble at all. Her grandbabies beg for her to spend the night, so they can snuggle into her bed and make her proud by following her instructions on how to pour juice on their own – without a drop spilled. She brings it all back – the unconditional love, patience, laughter, warmth, joy, life, admiration, and abundance. She brightens my day, and makes me think of this poem:

Sunbeams

Even
after
all this time
the sun never says to the earth,

“You owe me.”

Look
what happens
with a love like that–

it lights the whole
world.

–Hafiz