What is perfect

Autumn Roast Coffee

Between you and I, it is something you want. Target will sell it to you. I'm having it right now with cinnamon vanilla creamer in it and Redi Whip on top. It is what I like to call a"Fall Miracle" if you will, and I will.

Cheers.

The morning is cool today and I need a blanket while I sit on my couch and write to you.Who's excited?!!! (It's supposed to be 98 today later). I'm ignoring that. The transformation to fall is my favorite time of year, one that my sisters and I love so much, we think it happens much earlier than it does and we can be found wearing sweatshirts and drinking cider in July sometimes. Shopping for school supplies and thinking about football and chili makes me giddy.

I haven't had words to express exactly what I've felt since moving out here to our new place. I don't know that I can pin it all on moving to the sort of country or give credit to the location solely either. Maybe it's my age (strrretch), this time of life, my kids growing up...I don't know what. But there is change taking place in me, in who I am, in how I think. It is too big for me to understand and bigger yet for me to adequately verbalize or eloquently offer to you here in any sort of understandable manner because it confuses me, but I do know that starting over is good. So, I'll say that. Starting over is good. It reminds me of where I came from, and lets me embrace and teach those things to my children. It reminds me of my things in my past I'd like to leave behind but won't let myself forget. It reminds me of things I want to keep in my memory forever and pass on to them so they will remember too. It reminds me of who I am and why, the good and the bad and the funny and whatever else there might be that has shaped that.

As some of my favorite people say, "It IS what it IS."

Whatever that means.

What I do know is that I have to learn to accept that this is who I am, shaped by the things that I do and I don't like in my life. I can work to be a better person and work to be healthier and kinder and do this and do that and work harder and harder, but in the end, hating on yourself is something else entirely. That is a fine and thin line that I cross often.

Nothing is perfect.

On Sunday morning, Eli ran out to pick up all of the flags we had out in the yard to mark out Rosie's invisible fence. His job was to pick up every one of them on the whole property. He ran out in his striped fire truck pajamas and bed head and super man shoes through the morning dew and I followed him, wrapped up in a cozy sweatshirt clutching my coffee. He ran as fast as his little legs could carry him and I watched him grab every flag and bring it back to me as if he had found the greatest treasure there had ever been. We walked the whole property doing this in the morning sun.

I realized that in that moment, taking in everything I could, watching my son finding so much joy in something so small, that I suppose I was wrong. That was perfect. Nothing has ever been more perfect.

What is perfect to you?