All the Birds of This Day

On Sunday morning I went through all of the photos on my parent's computer from the last three years. Aside from some startling fashion choices all of us have made at some point or another, I kept thinking about how we have changed. The faces of my family members look older, as rightly they should. But also, they look wiser, which at many times, we could never have expected. Like any family, we've had our share of hard times in the last few years. I was surprised then to see that simultaneously, our wisened faces looked both full of joy and sorrow. Not so much weeping sorrow, just sorrow in the way that the world is hard sometimes, and things don't always go as expected. Later that night, we were all sitting around eating ice-cream and homemade chocolate sauce. Remy was on a blanket in the middle of the floor. He didn't want to stay in his bed downstairs and we didn't want to leave him there, so he was behaving himself at the late night party. As he was laying there, he drifted off to sleep. It was the most peaceful falling asleep I have ever witnessed. He looked up periodically and smiled to himself and then as slow as grass grows, his eyes closed, he put his arms up in little fists next to his face, and he was asleep. We put tiny sleeping Nixon next to him and as we took about 100 photos of the scene, I imagined what they must have been thinking as they drifted off. I think our faces and voices must have been perfect to these new little creatures. I don't think he minded the fact that we've all made mistakes, that things haven't gone all as planned, that we didn't turn out to be rich, or famous, or that we still have some bad style that we just don't realize yet. They trust us completely that life is good. I think we were all beautiful to them.