It was a good day

I don't have any jokes, knocks on politicos, or "That's outrageous!" moments for you.

But I can report this weekend was good, exactly as it was meant to be. As Ice Cube would say "Today was like one of those fly dreams..."

Friday marked the day that Mrs. B and I would have welcomed our child to this side of the world had a sudden ailment not taken our baby from us prematurely in late fall. So we spent this weekend in quiet reflection, enjoying life and each other's company and letting faith, good sense, and even a little science and logic guide us to the conclusion that things are happening in the proper order and we'll be parents when we're supposed to be.

Even so, the past several months have been an emotional roller coaster. Family and friends - and I'm including you all who weighed in through this blog - said all the right things. Co-workers and friendly acquaintances said all the right things.

We asked why, 'cause we wouldn't be human or normal if we didn't ask why. We got bitter. I suspect before all is said and done we will again...and again...and again. We laughed. We cried.

I could wrap this up right now with some sort of ism, some borrowed line from a poem like "Footprints in the Sand," or some figure of speech like "what doesn't kill you..."

But the fact is what doesn't kill you is still likely to really piss you off, at least temporarily.

I'm gonna compare this battle with the struggles of a one-time drunk: Twenty years after you've gone dry, you still ID yourself to new people as a "recovering" alcoholic. Less than five months after our loss, we're not healed. We're healing. We're good but still getting better.

Everyday it gets a little easier. Everyday something falls in place to let us know that God or the cosmos or Fred Claus or whatever/whomever you believe in gets us and gets that we're determined to have kids and raise 'em right and teach 'em how to feel ways about stuff. I believe in Karma and fate and so on. So, I don't believe it's any coincidence that just before the weekend Mrs. B's doctor gave her a super clean bill of health and finally, finally gave us the two-thumbs-up go-ahead to try again.

So with every bit of hippietude I can muster, I'm offering a toast to the architect(s) right now:

It's all good.

The Pursuit of Happiness

Or as Stan Freburg used to say in his July 4th, holiday special, "the purfuit of happiness."

Sorry, you have to be over 50 or a geek like me to get that one.

Anyway, I'm back from Carolina. And as I sat on the parking lot better known as I-95 South this morning on the way to work I had an epiphany about happiness: mine is contingent on me being comfortable in my surroundings - nothing more, nothing less.

You may think that's a given, just like those cliches we all tend to attach to happiness like family, pets, etc.

But happiness never has been an easy concept for me to grasp. I've always done like a shady politician who attaches $100 million for playground construction onto a bill intended to finance body armor for troops. I've added things like more money and unreachable goals like perfection to my happiness parameters.

And not to sound sappy, but while breathing that cool crisp air and strolling around with my dog, and my wife, and my mother (she drove down from VA to visit with us in NC for a couple of days), it hit me that I felt stress free. Seriously, my stomach was not bound in those knots that often come with suppressing my road rage in Miami. I didn't have that headache that comes from drinking excess coffee in an attempt to keep myself wired. I wasn't worried about anything...which is not the same as not having anything to worry about. But I was just happy with the folks around me and the space around me. And that was all I needed.

OK, enough of this flower-sniffing hippie nonsense. I have an article to finish. I'll chat w/you guys this evening.