My Rockwellian Day

I sit on the couch with my daughter, teaching her to crack peanuts with her fingernails

her hair still wet from the dip in the pool on this 95-degree Sunday.

Joe Castiglione calls balls and strikes on the radio.

1-0 for the good guys.

My son and wife are in the kitchen, cooking cupcakes from a recipe in the back of a children’s book called

Cupcake.

Later, wife and I sit on the back porch while Clara draws chalk robots in the driveway.

Kathryn makes herself a salmon burger and me a salami sandwich because she knows how I feel about fish.

Salmon and salami look like the same word but couldn’t be more different.

A butterfly drops out of the sky from nowhere.

She rises then drops then rises then drops and makes me wonder if there is an intended flight pattern.

Because nothing is random.

I say it’s a Monarch. Kathryn disagrees and calls yellow swallow tail.

“Chutes and ladders dad?”

1-1. Tie game.

Sure, Clara.

The cupcakes are done baking.

We apply the homemade buttercream frosting, which Kathryn and Ben also whipped up together.

3-1, bad guys.

Ben tries to sneak a handful of sprinkles into his mouth.

I pretend not to see him.

Never mind that the Sox are on the radio because we can’t afford cable.

Never mind that we were in the backyard instead of on vacation.

Forget that the book was from the library because we aren’t buying books for a while.

And pay no attention to the patchwork inflatable pool that has seen better days thanks to our friend the raccoon.

None of that stuff seems important today.

Why does it ever? Why will it tomorrow?

Today, like every day, is a gift.

Today, unlike every day, I am accepting it.

Still 3-1.