This moment in time

Driving home from the grocery store last night, I had an odd thought: for this moment in time, all is well. And the odd thing is, I expect things to go on indefinitely just as they are right now.

Mom is back home and functioning OK. Dad is still sitting in front of the TV hours on end, barely walking from bed to chair and back again, but still alive and not even seriously ill – and he's almost 90. My kids are all living at home. They're all teenagers and sometimes we get a bit too much togetherness, but I can't imagine them not living with me, not being here.

For this moment in time, this fall day, this is reality for me: all is well.

It's hard to grasp that idea of perpetually passing time, especially when the passage of time steals away people. My brother died last year, so I'll never hear his voice again, share a story, or have him offer me a cup of coffee in his office. A cousin died not too long ago; we'll never walk together in his village in Ukraine. My mother's friend has a husband with Alzheimer's, another thief of memories and times gone by.

Even though Jacob doesn't know what he'll do next year, what he'll study or whether he'll work (I think he'll end up at the community college), this is trivial, a small trial in the story of his life, and mine.

But my parents and elderly friends and family, they're at the end of the bench, as one man said. Just not sure which one will get pushed off next. Then again, it could be someone young, like my brother.

But this evening, as fall settles in and frost nips the leaves and sends them whirling to the ground, all is well. Chaotic at times, exhausting, full of rabbits and goats, too many of us cooking and too few cleaning up, but I wouldn't have it any other way.