I drove my Cooper

by chuckofish

This weekend the wee babes came over to play while their Mommy went to the sofa store and the wee laddie found my toy Mini Cooper high up on a bookshelf (quelle eagle eye.) No amount of telling him that it was off limits would prevail, so I said, fine, play with it. (Am I becoming a push-over?) He played with “my Cooper,” along with his “special cars”…

…and his “special book”.

When it was time to go home, however, he made quite a scene when told the Mini Cooper had to stay at Mamu’s house. (I am not a complete push-over.) He was tired, but he put up quite a fight. Later when his Dad got home from work and asked him what he had done that day, he told him all about “my Cooper.” His Dad asked if he played with the Beanie Babies etc and he said, “Yeah, and I drove my Cooper. I love that car.”

I was glad that daughter #1 had come home for happy hour, so that she could help wrangle the nutballs. We deserved those margaritas we had when they left.

Later the OM ordered take out from Amigo’s and we watched The Pajama Game (1957) and sang along with Doris Day and John Raitt.

On Sunday morning I drove my Cooper to an estate sale where I got some needlepoint coasters (can a person ever have too many coasters?) and a book. Daughter #1 found some sewing paraphernalia. She headed back to mid-Mo soon thereafter.

I FaceTimed with the infant and her Mommy. Life is quiet and our joys are simple.

I leave you with these thoughts about Life from Frederick Buechner:

The Temptation is always to reduce it to size. A bowl of cherries. A rat race. Amino acids. Even to call it a mystery smacks of reductionism. It is the mystery. As far as anybody seems to know, the vast majority of things in the universe do not have whatever life is. Sticks, stones, stars, space—they simply are. A few things are and are somehow alive to it. They have broken through into Something, or Something has broken through into them. Even a jellyfish, a butternut squash. They’re in it with us. We’re all in it together, or it in us.

Life is it. Life is with. After lecturing learnedly on miracles, a great theologian was asked to give a specific example of one. “There is only one miracle,” he answered. “It is life.” 

Have you wept at anything during the past year? 

Has your heart beat faster at the sight of young beauty? 

Have you thought seriously about the fact that someday you are going to die? 

More often than not, do you really listen when people are speaking to you instead of just waiting for your turn to speak? 

Is there anybody you know in whose place, if one of you had to suffer great pain, you would volunteer yourself? 

If your answer to all or most of these questions is no, the chances are that you’re dead.