Right off the top I must confess to the lack of fairness of it all. My children certainly can file a complaint of injustice.

When my children were young they learned very quickly the iron clad rule – Don’t touch my stuff!

Especially off limits were my pens and journals.

If they required a writing instrument I could easily get them one from the 7000 pens for $0.99 bag.

Now my two year old granddaughter sits beside me while I’m having breakfast. She reaches for my pen and starts a drawing in my notebook.

Surprisingly tectonic plates did not shift. The sun retained its course across the sky. The house still stood. Not one of the seven horsemen appeared.

And I heard myself saying, “Interesting drawing.”

When my children were young I was too preoccupied. Understandable, legitimate even.

There were contracts to complete, others to win. Money always seemed to flow out faster than in. And with 5 children something always seemed to need attention.

I quickly gave up answering, with any seriousness, the question, “How are the kids?” Which one? When?

Now, something different.

Grandma finds a misshapen Kiwi fruit.

“Looks like a bum,” she says.

We all laugh. And then spend the next 15 minutes voicing more permutations and enunciations than a Juilliard drama class.

“Looks like a bum!”

It is not that I am without important things to do.

They still send me a cheque to work 80% time. I’ve got the blog to develop, social media and online marketing to decipher and I am twisting the quantum theory of spacetime around in my mind like a Rubik’s cube, wondering about the impact of quantum and string theory for traditional views of providence, God and the meaning of life.

However, right now, “looks like a bum” seems to take precedence.

Was joy always this close?