Afterbath

During her initial decline and in the immediate wake of her diagnosis, it was hard to find good.  And even still on days when it feels like we're tiptoeing along a blurry edge between life and death, it's easy to find ourselves lost in the land of the impossible.  Those are the days I can't do anything without feeling the prickling hot behind my eyes.
But there are times when the clouds part and the glory of heaven escapes and lands here.  Times like when I swaddle my daughter after a bath, a mercy of mundane living.  Of living.  I feel a heightened sense of gratitude in the simple routine, in the drying and the detangling and the dressing, each part of a fresh joy.

Times when, even if it seems like a rare phenomenon, I know we most certainly haven't been passed over by an absent grace.  When I realize that she is here at all makes me one of the luckiest mothers who have ever drawn breath.
JEB