The Orange

Wednesday morning my daughter got up and said "you know where I want to have breakfast this morning?" "Where?" we inquired idly, already eating muffins and cereal at a leisurely pace, since it was another snow day and no one was going anywhere. She named an open-air restaurant overlooking the Atlantic near Charleston, South Carolina where we like to go for vacation. "Oh yeah," we all breathed.

And somehow that breathed a little happiness into the whole day. Because four months from tomorrow, we plan to have lunch at that restaurant, breathing the warm salt air.

It put me in the mood to give you this poem by Wendy Cope, which I discovered in the continuing process of looking for one to read out loud.

The Orange

At lunchtime I bought a huge orange--
The size of it made us all laugh.
I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave--
They got quarters and I had a half.

And that orange, it made me so happy,
As ordinary things often do
Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park.
This is peace and contentment. It's new.

The rest of the day was quite easy.
I did all the jobs on my list
And enjoyed them and had some time over.
I love you. I'm glad I exist.