• Laughing about all manner of things with my daughter.

• Mornings that manage to conclude without any fights about which shoes someone should wear or whether that someone was told she was going to have to take a shower.

• Making an unexpected connection with someone at work.

• Watching my much bigger than before but still quite little child walk from the car into her school.

• Knowing the questions for a majority of the day’s Jeopardy answers.

• Picking my child up and feeling her little nose against my neck.

• Bravely facing something that scares me.

• Texting all day every day with my BFF about absolutely nothing.

• Laughing about 20 year old inside jokes with my siblings.

These are a few of my favorite things.

“Stop by the copy room for a doughnut,” it read.  “Thanks for all you do.”  Always nice to be appreciated.

I somehow managed to go directly to my office.

Sometime later I needed to make some copies…  Shoot! I said to myself.  These damn doughnuts are still in here.  But I don’t even want one.

Oh, but then I went and lifted the box’s lid. 

I still had the delicious taste of a maple-y flavored doughnut in my mouth when I stepped back into the hallway.  Feeling not as guilty as I perhaps should have (my plan is usually to eat sweets only on the weekends), I spotted someone walking toward me carrying 2 big bags of plain Lays potato chips.

OMG.  Suddenly I went back in time and was 8 or 9 or 10 years old all over again, getting off the school bus and walking to my grandmother’s apartment.  When I got there, she’d nearly always have some doughnuts with white icing and plain Jays potato chips waiting for me.  Not sure how we came up with this combination, but it was absolutely divine.  We would eat our sinful treats and laugh about whatever.  She’d sip 7Up and we’d play cards–1500 Rummy, as I recall.  And she’d keep score in her 1930s handwriting on her rectangular, brown sheets of “scratch” paper.  Where did she even get such paper?

My God, do I miss her.

I smiled as I passed the woman with the bags of chips and silently thanked my boss for such a sweet treat.

Could be!
Who knows?
There’s something due any day;
I will know right away
Soon as it shows.
It may come cannonballin’
Down through the sky,

Gleam in its eye,
Bright as a rose!
Who knows?

It’s only just out of reach,
Down the block, on a beach,
Under a tree.
I got a feelin’ there’s a miracle due,
Gonna come true,
Comin’ to me!

Could it be? Yes, it could.
Something’s coming, something good,
If I can wait!
Something’s comin’, I don’t know what it is
But it is
Gonna be great!

With a click, with a shock,
Phone’ll jingle, door’ll knock
Open the latch!
Something’s comin’, don’t know when,
But it’s soon–
Catch the moon,
One-handed catch!
Around the corner,
Or whistling down the river,
Come on — deliver
To me!

Will it be? Yes, it will.
Maybe just by holdin’ still
It’ll be there!
Come on, something, come on in,
Don’t be shy,
Meet a guy,
Pull up a chair!

The air is hummin’,
And something great is comin’!
Who knows?
It’s only just out of reach,
Down the block, on a beach.
Maybe tonight.

Music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim.
© 1956, 1957 Amberson Holdings LLC and Stephen Sondheim. Copyright renewed.
Leonard Bernstein Music Publishing Company LLC, Publisher.

Tonight I went to see Michael Buble in concert. He rocks. My God, does he ever rock. (Well, not that he “rocks” at all but, you get the point.)

Aside: I think I was one of maybe 10 persons of color in the entire arena. My brethren, you don’t know what you’re missing!

What a voice! What stage presence! What a show!

Would I love classical music were it not for early exposure to Tom & Jerry? (You laugh, but think about it…) Would I love jazz and Latin music if my father hadn’t played these all the time and had his own drum?  (I want to call it a bongo, but bongos come in pairs, right? It was a single, taller, red drum and if any of my siblings are reading this, they are no doubt cracking up right now as they recall it.) Would I love Broadway musicals if West Side Story weren’t introduced to me at a young age?

Hard to say. It’s truly hard to say.

When I was in the 7th grade, we had an essay contest for which we were to write about the Winter Olympics that had just occurred.  NO, I WILL NOT TELL YOU WHICH GAMES THESE WERE.  Well, I had, in fact, watched quite a bit of this coverage.  So, I wrote and wrote and wrote in great detail all about the games and loved it, as I recall.  I can’t remember exactly what my ranking was in the competition, but I do recall going to a next round.

Let’s go back a little further.  In the 4th grade I wrote a compelling story about the day that my grandfather died.  I wrote about how it had seemed like any other day.  I’d gone to school, my sister and I had walked home from the bus stop afterward, and we were jumping on our parents’ bed that afternoon when the call came in.  I’m pretty sure that this was the first death that I was fully aware of.  Anyway, I remember my teacher being moved by not just my story, but by my storytelling.

Alright, I’ll cut this short.  I’m a writer.  I AM A WRITER.  I’ve always known this.  So why I was an English major for only 1 semester in college, I couldn’t tell you.  I guess we tend to devalue the things that we most enjoy or that come somewhat easily to us.  Surely we’re supposed to struggle a bit more.

Whatevs.  I’ve retired from this way of thinking.

It tried to get me to surrender to it… To stop writing, dancing, indeed, to stop doing most things that I enjoy.   My God.

Well, I’m climbing out of the pit, no, the abyss*!  It is time**.

*I will pretend that I’ll send a $50 gift card to the reader who can identify the movie from which this quote comes: “Send these foul beasts into the abyss!!”  LOL.  I’m such a nerd.

**Wow!  Thinking in movie lines has become so automatic that I almost missed this one.  LOL.  Another pretend $50 for that one: “It is time.”