I sang and hummed “Our house is very very very nice house,” as I pushed the lasagna into the oven. In the corner of my eye, I caught your father and his screwdriver fighting with a cabinet door that constantly banged into our refrigerator. The youngest you sat doing your homework at the kitchen table with your head phones on. I never knew if the noise cancelling function was on, I just knew that it allowed you to selectively participate in conversations. The hairy beast snored at your feet and I giggled. The older you called to let me know her ETA. She couldn’t wait to give me the details of her night out and I couldn’t wait to listen.
It was life, my life, our life. It felt like a captured moment, a picture. It felt nice. It was a nice moment that asked me to turn off the news blasting out war and sadness and the social media whose algorithms addicted people into states of division. So I did, and there was quiet and I breathed and became aware of the “evening sun” coming through the windows. I knew that everything I had just turned off eagerly waited behind the screens to be turned back on. That kind of noise always wants to dominate conversations, a stench that infects the earth it enters, but, in this moment, I refused to engage with its desire.
I turned to both you and dad and said, “Let’s play Our House by Crosby, Still, Nash and Young.”
Excitedly, I shouted out, “Hey, little one, this played at our wedding,” and you, with your headphones, didn’t react.
“Alexa, play ‘Our House’.” That is when “Our House” by Madness barged in.
“That was our OTHER wedding song,” your father laughed, shutting the cabinet.
I turned to him, remembering, smiling, “It was,” I answered, and just like the night of our wedding, the mood changed. After all the formality and seriousness that comes along with forever commitments, Madness and its ska beat still grabs me and energises. On the night of our wedding, suddenly we were part of a crowd yelling, “Our house, in the middle of our street…” jumping and turning so much that I am sure I could feel the world tip.
At this moment, wars raged on, the politicians continued to beat each other up, inflation continued to rise, resources to dwindle but in my tiny little village, in my tiny little home, tucked away in my tiny little neighbourhood, in this tiny little moment, I danced with your father like we did 20 years ago, arms up, hopping around, feeling alive. You rolled your eyes, tipped down your head again, but I saw you smile.
It's a happy moment, one of many, in our happy little world. Our story captured in our four walls in the midst of a thousand other stories and outside of our four walls are the four walls of others and their thousands of happy stories. I remind myself of this when the world feels so overwhelmed with sadness and so fragile. I remind myself that this too exists.
