After my daughter and her husband bought their little ranch on a dead-end street in a little town in western Massachusetts, they began to realize all of the things that are wrong with it. Mold behind the walls in the basement. Bathroom too small. Not enough closets after all. Windows need replacing.
But last week they watched out their kitchen window as eight deer cavorted around just behind the bush that separates their back yard (which badly needs re-grading) and the nature preserve that abuts their property.
And each day the same family of cardinals gathers at the bird feeder that graces the corner of their yard.
There’s very little traffic on their road, and the neighbor (who is my daughter’s age) two houses down runs a small day-care center where my grandson loves to hang out with the other kids while my daughter and her neighbor hang out in the background.
My son-in-law works at a new job that he likes that is less than a ten-minute drive from the house. Sometimes he even comes home for lunch.
The house can be fixed enough to be comfortable and safe, but a friendly neighborhood where deer meander past your back yard is, as they say, priceless — and, in the grand scheme of things, enough to balance out the bad.
I try to remind myself of that as I find myself back in my little apartment, across the hall from my mom. I think of the victims of the tsunami who are struggling to rebuild some kind — any kind — of roofs over their heads, and I think that what I have is enough. For now, anyway.
The Little Picture is what we make of it. We have no control over the Big One.
My three days of belly-laughing with my grandson is enough to balance out the stuff that sometimes doesn’t seem enough.