Existential Triumph.

A few weeks ago when it was one of the first warmish days with sun (and that means above 32 degrees), we went up to a town called Greenfield on a few errands. Waiting for Cassidy to finish up in a store, I sat with Scarlet on a bench. Des sat in a stroller next to us, and I kid you not, it may have been his first time sitting in a stroller. Of course as a newbie I would use the infant car seat attached to stroller contraption, but that doesn’t really count. I’m talking open-eyed, engaged with the world, being pushed through the streets. I have literally carried him in my arms everywhere. I used a carrier a few times and when I’m shopping, he sits in front of the cart..

..Let’s just say my arms hurt. And they’re totally defined. And it was a new experience for us both.

As we sat, a warm breeze sent up the smell of a man smoking a pipe next to us. It was like I was zapped into some past memory. Slapped across the face really, although I couldn’t place the who, what, where, when, or how. I could place the “why” which is that pipes smell good so someone I know or knew, and love or loved, once smoked a pipe near my face on a warmish day. It was grand.

And at this second that the pipe smoke smell hit, an older man in a grey suit with tangled hair down his back walked by and I went into this whole mind spiral about him and what his dreams have been, and if he’s reached them. Then I wondered what it’s like to be that age and to not have lived your dreams, or what it’s like to be that age and to have lived your dreams but not to have created any more after they were reached. And then lastly, what it’s like to have reached some and to be dreaming up more and more every day.

So I decided, imagined, assumed that in this particular man’s case, it was that last case. And suddenly I felt so good and high on life.

Not high on the pipe, mind you. It was just a funny feeling because I had been in such a deep trance that I would have thought I’d have a minor existential crisis – questioning the point of life and the point of me and the nothingness of it all sometimes. And instead, I thought about the everythingness of it all. So I decided to name it an “existential triumph” which sounds like a good opposite of an “existential crisis.” I don’t know if this makes sense at all. It was a very full and happy feeling on a full and happy day with the family.

I know I ramble on my with my deep thinks sometimes. I wish I could shut my brain off a lot, but instead I unload a lot of it here.

What a feeling.

It didn’t hurt that this is who I was with at the time of the existential triumph. Look out, world:

Anyway, it’s Sunday night and I just got back from a whirlwind trip to Jersey to see my sister and her new house and to go to a zoo and to take a gazillion pictures and to celebrate Easter a week late. And I’m really tired. Road trips alone with two kids are no joke.