We went to SoupPlantation this week, my favorite buffet restaurant of all time because it has a really long salad bar, soups made from scratch, fresh breads and corn bread and flavored butters. (Unless you count Onami’s with their sushi bar.) That was fun, but what I remember it for was when I took the Girl to the bathroom after we ate. She stood listening to the piped in bathroom music while standing next to a wall. Her knees started to bend a little and she started bouncing to the music. “Mommy, I going to dance.” She announced.
I said okay, so she moved around a little bit, selecting the tile from which to begin her dancing. She stopped at one, and then looked up at me again, and said once more, “I going to dance now Mommy.” But apparently that one wasn’t good enough either and she moved around like this a few more times before finally she started to spin around in circles as fast as she could, which is what she thinks of as dancing.
When there is music, we should be dancing. That is a basic assumption of life for my children, and why not? Why not dance in the bathroom after washing your hands? Why not take a break from figuring out the sound the letter g makes all by yourself and writing it perfectly on your very first try to turn cartwheels in the middle of the living room, and jump up and down and announce loudly over and over again that you are so smart and you can DO IT! Why not celebrate every small moment that brings joy and happiness bring attention to it and make it an event?
Why not treasure every small pleasure and every moment that we are happy, printing it permanently on to our brains and marking the map of our life with the things that bring joy?
Which is why I am here today, and why I am committed to keeping Small Joys Friday a day of celebrating these things.