Sunny September day

We are still getting smoke at times from the fires in California and the East coast is bracing for a hurricane and I cried my way through watching CNN 10 this morning.  It was all about another sunny September day 17 years ago.

One clear memory I have of that day is talking to my dad on the phone.  I told him I didn't know how I was going to raise my children (Braeden was 4 and Emma was 2) in such a dark and scary world.  He said he had felt the same way sometimes when I was little.

So the world can be a dark and scary place but what really makes me cry the most when I watch remembrances of September 11 are the heroes.

Just everyday heroes who started their sunny September day thinking it was going to just be a typical day and then everything turned on its head.

Thinking about the vast ways life can be turned on its head makes me grateful for the simple and mundane, silly and sweet things in my life today.

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I finally had a chance to catch up with Braeden on the phone.  I have been missing that kid.  He had a great trip to Colorado although he got food poisoning from either a sandwich he ate that had been sitting in the car for too long or some grocery store sushi he ate.  I feel sick just typing those things.  He's 21.  He'll learn.

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I know the barest minimum about the Kardashians but that didn't stop Emma and me from sending Kardashian jokes via text throughout yesterday.  They didn't 100% make sense to me (because I know the barest minimum about the Kardashians) but Emma is a funny wordsmith and her plays on words delight me.

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Mark is nicer to me than I deserve.  This is from yesterday afternoon:

I had a head-ache (again, still) and he sat on the couch and had me put my head on his lap while he rubbed my temples and told me that the temples are the thinnest part of the skull so that means our brains can feel it more when rubbed there.  I don't know if that made me feel better or not.

But Mark makes me feel better.

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Yesterday, since I wasn't at work, I did housework and laundry and read and it was nice to be home.  I did look at the clock a little wistfully at times and think about my students a few times though.  I like it at home and I like it at school.

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It was a beautiful evening and I took this picture off the deck.

I laid on the deck couch and took this picture of the sky.  It looked like a marble.

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After a short family home evening around the kitchen table, I went to take a bath and Adam and Mark went to mow the lawn.

The new lawn mower has headlights.  Adam texted this picture:

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This morning Adam and Mark and some of the stalwarts got up before the sun and put flags on the lawns of our neighborhood.  I drove Mark to school down streets of fluttering flags.

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Little bits of things have been floating in my head, unarticulated thoughts about Grace and the power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ in my life.

I can't really explain (clearly) but it is real and I feel grateful for the things I know.

Even when the world feels dark and scary, there is always Light.