I posted a picture of Georgia and Jesse the Most Perfect Cat yesterday on Instagram and wrote underneath:
“It takes very little to feel happy, once you recognize a moment for all that’s in it.”
(Of course I was talking about good, if "ordinary," moments.)
Instagram isn’t the place to write more than that, which is why I’m writing here. I want to unpack the idea a little further: a moment, and what’s in it.
In this moment, there is a girl on a couch. Georgia. She is eight, a little small in stature but huge in personality. She is my girl, strong, funny, and loving.
A few hours before the moment, Georgia found out that I was the tooth fairy. I had been tired the night before and the cursive I used in the letter to be tucked under her pillow looked very much like my cursive – not spidery and looping enough to be the feather-light tooth fairy’s. In the morning, her brother called it out and I confessed. A fleeting look of sadness passed across Georgia’s face as she thought about the news, and this made me sad, too. We will miss the tooth fairy.
Georgia's teeth are coming out and coming in all at once, and not exactly in ideal formation. But she is confident, at eight, and this makes me so happy, her not worrying about crooked teeth. Teeth can be straightened someday, whereas confidence is difficult to get back once you’ve lost it.
Georgia’s hair is blonde and chin-length, lopped off to match her beloved cousin’s bob during a magical trip to California this past winter. There is no more terrible tangle at the back of her head that caused us so much grief and tears when she had it long. That tangle caused many moments – moments of me chasing her around the downstairs with a brush shrieking that I was gentle, GENTLE SO COME HERE! – that did not make us happy. So we are fans of the new hair.
I am beyond grateful to be the mom of the girl in the picture. Once, when she was 35 weeks old and inside my tummy, it was touch and go as to how well things were going to go for us. I had a spinal surgery and C-section in one fell swoop, five weeks early, and my baby was okay. She is a miracle.
In the picture, Jesse is warming Georgia’s body and enjoying a good chin scratch. He has the softest fur. I know it’s usually dogs and horses that are trained to be therapy animals, but if ever there was a cat who was a therapy cat, Jesse is that creature. He knows when we are sick or distressed. He plants himself on our chests and nuzzles our faces, and at night, his favourite place to sleep is on the kids’ pillows, cradling the tops of their heads. We love when Jesse sleeps, because then we get to hear his long, sonorous snoring. He sounds like an old man.
The moment was so peaceful. Georgia stretched out after school on our dove grey couch, head on faux-fur pillow, comfy in the loose denim pants I got her a few weeks ago. She loves loose things. And no dresses anymore, nor leggings. Flowy style like me. I am grateful that she still wants to emulate my style. This too shall pass.
After school the kids come home and the school day falls off them, all except the really good parts. Because school is sometimes fun and sometimes it’s just a lot – a lot of having to be good, of navigating friends and kids who don’t yet know how to be friends.
This moment had a lot in it, as it turns out.
