Taking Happiness

I made soup today. I coarsely chopped collard greens. Chopped onion. Minced garlic. I poured olive oil into a stainless steel pot. Added tomatoes, beans and sausage, things the recipe didn't call for. I added Tabasco that forever reminds me of Lucy, red pepper flakes, freshly ground pepper and salt. I stirred. I gently boiled and then served soup. With fresh bread from Virgilio's, butter, Cole eating the middle and leaving the crust.

We talked of mothers and Mormons and doctors. Of baseball, in a roundabout way, and of love.

This is my happiness. In the middle of sadness. To sit at a table and break bread and drink coffee as babies squawk for cookies and life lives around us.