2017! It seems much further along the timeline than 12 months from last New Years Day.
But 2016 was one full year! It broke my heart with loss and it filled that same broken vessel with new birth and joy. Those 12 months were quite the roller coaster ride and I have come through a little worn out but high on gratitude.

For the past 3 weeks I have been at my daughter’s home helping her and her guy with their new baby girl, Eloise,lots of sleepless nights, lots of fears and tension but buckets of love within which to bathe.
We have all developed a complete obsession with not only what goes into our tiny charge but what comes out the other end and sometimes, both ends. I have relearned a thousand ancient skills; how to get milk stains out of sleepers, how to fill a bottle with one hand while soothing a crying baby, how to jiggle, rock and walk all in a rhythm that settles a wee one out of gas pains and into sleep.
I have not applied makeup or styled my hair more than twice in 23 days, I did spiff up for Christmas Day and once to go and get groceries though I can’t say that generated any better treatment at the local Loblaws.

I have watched in awe these past 3 weeks as my baby girl has taken her first steps in motherhood, the circle of life spinning before me. There are events in life which make us happy and there are events which are happiness and we are unable to claim them as a personal feeling because they are too enormous to fit in one person’s emotional profile. They belong to the universe.

This morning while my daughter and Jon slept I cradled a milk drunk Eloise on my chest and simultaneously laughed on Facetime with my grandson and my son.
I think time stopped in those minutes which my son unwittingly facilitated with his call. This was happiness in its full universal form. Thirty eight years ago today I became a Mother for the first time and the abundance that day has harvested was fully evident at 10:33 AM today.

So far I am thanking 2017 and no matter what else comes over the next 12 months, this morning is still logged as bliss. It is a very good beginning.