the sweetest journey

I’ve just returned from visiting my daughters, son-in-law, and granddaughter. It was a short, but sweet, journey for many reasons. There were the many times my granddaughter made me laugh. The hugs. The food. The drink. And, especially the conversations. There were tears of sadness, and tears of joy.

Most of all, I just reveled in the fact that I was there with so many beautiful humans, two of whom I held on the first day that they were born: my two daughters.

We three are rather verbose women, and so our conversations go at hyper speed when we are together. Somehow we keep up with each other, and politely allow each other to cut each other off in order to get a word in edgewise. I’m older now, so I tend to want to dissolve into the background to simply enjoy and absorb every word that my daughters speak.

As the three of us moved the conversation from one topic to the next with ease, we suddenly landed on the topic about how fascinating human beings are. We talked about the amazing art, food, science, and more that humans produce. We talked about the beauty of all body shapes and types. It was a delicious discussion about all of the goodness and kindness in the world, rather than about, well, that other stuff.

I finally summed up our conversation and said, “Yup, I truly believe that there are more kind people in the world than not.”

My words were followed by an uncomfortable bit of silence, and my oldest daughter turned to me and looked me straight in the eye. As a mom, I didn’t know if this was one of those moments when I was about to be tested for making that statement. I bolstered myself so that I wouldn’t come back with a snarky retort to what I imagined she was going to say to me. 

But, what she said was not what I imagined at all. In fact, it was quite the opposite.

“Well, yeah, Mom, that’s why we’re called humankind.”

I looked at her questioningly. “Humankind?”

She grinned. “Yeah,” she said, “Human. Kind.”