I feel lucky

 Today was a busy day at school. On one of my trips whizzing through the hallways I glanced up and saw the kindergartners' St. Patrick's Day art on the walls. 

Each student had coloured in a poster with a shamrock in the centre, and the title read "I feel lucky!" The students had finished the sentences themselves.

"I feel lucky ... when my dad plays with me!"

"I feel lucky ... because I have food!"

"I feel lucky ... because I get hugs!"

"I feel lucky ... to have friends!"

"I feel lucky ... whenever I see my mom!"

And I had to stop reading because I was on my way back to class and did not want to arrive with a face full of tears. 

But my heart was split wide open.

And when I was zooming past that bulletin board, all the moms from the kinder class flashed through my head. Moms who seem to have it all together, and moms who seem a little more like me. Thin moms and fat moms, moms with chronic illnesses, addictions. Moms who roll up to the door in their pyjamas, still zipping up lunchbags. Moms with messy cars, moms with creaky strollers, moms with wagons, moms in boots. None of them are on the covers of magazines, none of them would make you look twice.

The kid who wrote "whenever I see my mom" isn't glad because their mom is perfect, flawless, radiant. They're glad because they love her. And they love their dad, and their friends, and food.

They count themselves lucky because they have eyes open to see their well-loved, delicious, ordinary luckynesses. 

Tonight I looked around. 

Yeah. I feel lucky too.