“My whole life is in that house.” That’s what Madonna Badger screamed on Christmas morning as her Connecticut house burned to the ground with her three children and her parents still trapped inside. On December 25, 2011, Ms. Badger lost her past and her legacy.
In an instant, everything for her changed.
I am humbled when I think about how the permanence our everyday life can be so transient and how ordinary life is what keeps us afloat. We all complain about the everyday. Too many dishes in the sink. Running late for a business meeting or an evening dinner with friends. Traffic. Deadlines. Children crying. We all think we are on the edge with the mundane, but the glory is in those quotidian details.
In an instant, for every one of us, what we may take for granted, can change.
Fill yourself up with all the quiet details in your life. A cup of coffee. The morning commute. The rattling of old pipes or creaky walls in your house. The cries of your five year old’s nightmare in the middle of the night. The sometimes inconveniences of everyday life. They are details to be embraced.
In an instant. It can all change.
Welcome! I am a lawyer turned freelance writer, essayist, and editor. On staff at Literary Mama and the co-founder and co-editor of the literary journal, The Sunlight Press, my essays and reported work have appeared in The Washington Post, The Lily, Saveur, Civil Eats, Brain, Child, ESPN and elsewhere. I am currently at work on a memoir on grief and culture and how it provides perspective on life’s ordinary graces. I invite you to appreciate the ordinary with me. I hope my daily practice of seeing the magic in the mundane helps you celebrate and find more of these moments in your life too.
Oh Rudri. This is a beautiful and timely reminder. Thank you for this.
Nice reminder, Rudri. Every day we need to have gratitude in our heart. Xoxo
We can’t take anything here with us when we leave. So true to be grateful for the quiet moments and for the people while we have them here.
I love your insightful posts. They always ground you back to what really matters. We have to be so greatful for what we have. It’s hard to always remember that.
Thank you for this beautiful reminder, Rudri.
Rudri,
This story inspired me to read two stories to my boys tonight and to be grateful to do so. I pray for this woman to find some comfort and strength in time.
This poor woman, how horrible. There really is so much to be grateful about. Why is it so hard sometimes?
That story is tragic and heartbreaking. I can’t even imagine. You’re completely right — we have to embrace what we have while we have it.
It really is about appreciation of the “extraordinary ordinary.” Why does it take the shadow of loss to remind us, all too often?
Poignant and heartbreaking.