Good Night Video

The other night, while Billy was gone at Scouts (he is the Scoutmaster for our church troop), Liam wanted to make a "Goodnight" video. It seemed like a good way to liven the monotony of a routine I've done every night for the last four years, one that seems immeasurably harder to perform when Billy is absent. So we set about filming the bath time, the pajamas, the distract-mom playing, the scripture reading, the family prayer . . . It was a night like any other, with me doing anything I could to speed up the process, and them doing anything they could to sloooow it down. 

When I put it together tonight, after the kids were in bed, the house quiet, QUIET, and got a little teary-eyed. Today was a hard day. I was impatient and cranky, the kids followed my lead, and we all whined and threw our weight around. 

But when I watched these little guys, with the audio on mute and a little Billy Joel added in, I saw it in reflective manner. It made me think of one of my favorite books, Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury, when a father looks into his kitchen window from the outside, and sees his family as if for the first time. He sees all the love in the relationships and the profound joy in the interactions. Suddenly his outside interests, his worldly worries and stresses, seem so petty in comparison to his wife at the stove, the daughter fetching butter from the fridge, the sons playing cars under the table. He realizes that it was in that kitchen, in his humble home, that true peace could be found. 

I think I should put the mundane moments of my life to music a little more often. Maybe I'd rush it a little less and enjoy it a lot more.