Kimberlee K.

One of my goals for this year is to do monthly reflections, and while I have a series of questions that I can go through, another thing I thought of was to write about my “best day” of the month. Some months are full of good days, some months are full of bad ones. Some months go by in a blink and you cannot for the life of you figure out how to answer the question, “what have you been up to lately?”

Good days will take all different shapes and show all different colors, so I thought it might be fun to see those expressed throughout the year.

I’d also like to pray that at the end of each month there are so many to choose from—for me and for you.

Here is my best day in January:

After a week of watching the news, watching as the horrifying wildfires ravaged Southern California, my family and I headed up north to spend time with more family and to celebrate two birthdays.

While we’d all been fortunate enough to live in areas that didn’t require evacuation, smoke had filled our skies and wind rattled our windows, marking us as fortunate, yes, but unsettled and heartbroken. The four-hour drive from Los Angeles felt like going on the run, like jumping in cold water on a hot day or tucking in under a blanket on a cold one. The skies cleared and the air quality improved with each passing mile, and we all seemed to sigh out a collective breath. But it was strange. It’s always strange to feel safe, to feel relieved, to feel blessed, when you’re well aware of the tragedy and chaos taking place so close to you—to get into a warm bed knowing that some people no longer had one, or to give into exhaustion knowing there were first responders who didn’t have that option.

But we woke up that Saturday in a house near the water, with a sky bluer than we’d seen in days. We woke up slow and without a schedule. We pulled sweatshirts on over our pajamas and didn’t care what our hair looked like. We didn’t put on any makeup or decide what we were going to do that day. We just sat and ate and chatted and laughed. We listened to “Pink Pony Club” and the discography of Sugarland. We followed my one-year-old niece around, laughing whenever she laughed, our hearts swelling whenever we earned a smile or a wave. We pointed at birds outside, we occasionally propped open the door and reveled in the wintery breeze, we passed around a Tupperware of chocolate chip cookies and a bag of homemade sourdough bread.

Around 2:30pm, we went down to the dock to fish.

Half of the group walked down to set up the poles, and the other half stayed in the empty parking lot, doing laps with the one-year-old who marveled at all of the open space she had to explore. I spread my arms like a bird and ran beside her, listening to her giggle and squeal. My brother-in-law put his RC boat in the water and its tiny wake was all that disturbed the still lake.

“Do you think we can all get in a picture?” someone asked.

There was no one around to ask to take it, so we plotted and propped up an iPhone, then stood in a line and smiled. Somehow, we got it on the first try.

A ladybug landed by my feet and I let it crawl on my finger. I’d always heard they were good luck, so I passed it to my sister and my cousin, telling them to make a wish, not caring if those were the rules or not.

I never looked at my phone, or my watch. I had no idea what time it was, and didn’t need to.

Eventually we made our way back to the house and watched some of the football game, but then most of us piled back in the Polaris to go back down to the dock to see the sunset.

We missed it, but again, it didn’t really matter.

We skipped rocks and tried to throw them as far as we could with our non-dominant hand. We pointed at the parts of the sky that were pink and clapped for a hunting dog running drills with his owner. We zipped up our jackets and bopped to songs playing on the speaker and we put our sunglasses on top of our heads as everything got dimmer.

We toured the neighborhood and made a slow crawl back up to the house for dinner, the tips of our noses cold but everything else warm. We drank wine and whiskey and ate steak and green beans and macaroni and cheese. We did a crossword puzzle and played trivia and laughed, aware that we’d have to go home the next day, aware that the fires were still burning and people were still in trouble, aware that we were among the lucky ones, but not taking that for granted.