Today, I slept in. I cleaned and made lists. I ate a pop tart. I laughed with my kids and argued productively with my husband. I answered phone calls about patients, ordering lab tests and asking for advice from a provider much smarter than I. I ran errands by myself and purchased not a thing. I said yes when it was suggested that we have an impromptu family dinner at the local Asian spot. It was a good day.

And on this Earth Day, it rained. It’s as if she knew we needed the dust settled and the cars washed and the soil prepped for gardens. She’s smart and kind like that.

A friend and colleague invited us to his punk band’s first show yesterday evening, held in a metalworks shop. My husband wore a jean jacket and took photos. I wore ear plugs and bobbed my head at approximately 200 beats per minute. Together, we traveled back nearly twenty years and it was glorious. As we drove to pick up our son from youth group, windows down to rid our clothes of other people’s smoke, I smiled out loud. The roots are what make us who we are, twenty years and five thousand miles later.

I’ve said a lot of things over the years on here. I’ve been wrong a lot and I’ve let a lot go. But one thing I will take to my death bed? Making the bed. I will forever prescribe making the bed as a cure for many of my world’s problems. I’ll also add that spraying said bed, and the rest of the room, with some kind of fragrance (my current favorite) has not failed me yet, either.

Many years have passed since I fell in love with Generation Z and still, I find myself refreshed and perplexed and delighted by each member I meet. At the risk of lumping and generalizing and painting too broad a stroke, I have observed them: willing to be vulnerable, willing to receive feedback, willing to die on a hill fighting for one conspiracy theory and willing to leave another in the dust of public opinion. Generation Z makes all of the sense and none of the sense and I don’t want to live or work or play without them.

I recently found a drafted post entitled The Beauty of the Chore, a collection of photos I started last summer to document our summer-long project to prepare wood for winter, and it is still true… being outside, or rather — any place one loves — makes the work sweeter. I have spent great effort finding that space and staying within it.

There are days, like today, when I miss my old life. Nothing is particularly wrong with the one I have now. In fact, it’s better than ever in many ways. And yet, it only takes a song or a photo or a scent or a flash of a memory to bring me to my knees. Nostalgia is deep and visceral.

In these moments, I’m grateful for the chance to truthfully tell myself, you did not waste those years. Those moments were good and they were not lost on you. There is nothing to regret. Thank God for that.