Profound Happiness

This is November? It's a beautiful way for the month to begin - weather wise. Even though my partner was fighting off some sort of bug, we packed up the four kids we had at home and travelled to explore a local park.

When we arrived at Jack Darling we - according to our personality - skipped, walked and ambled along the path. A path which changed from cinder to wooden planks to asphalt as it wound through trees and over or around the water.

All the while, to the left Lake Ontario beckoned with its rushing waves and strip of beach.

Though we made it past the first playground, our seven year old made sure we didn't make it past the second by breaking free from our small pack and rushing toward it. One by one the other kids followed, until we were left to enjoy a moment of quiet aloneness on the path - well as quiet and alone as two people can be standing 5 feet from a playground infested with kids while other walkers pass by (bliss).

After an hour or so we have walked all of the path that we want. Some of us have crawled across the massive felled trees while others still have been brave enough to climb along the three foot high railings which enclose the wooden path.

Exhausted of our desire to walk, we meander to the shore where, as if repelled, we spread to skip rocks, skitter across boulders or in my case fully lay down on the asphalt outcropping where I watch the birds soar through my line of vision in the cloud sprinkled sky.

After a few moments, I sit up and look across the water to marvel at its expanse and its movement on this beautifully mild Autumn day.

I don't know why the water does what it does to me; why it makes me feel alive yet also at peace. I don't know why the sound and the sight start me to rejoicing inside to the point where at times fills my heart to overflowing from my eyes. I don't know why it's easier to breathe or why I want to draw its scent deeply so as to fill myself with the experience as much as I possibly can. I don't know why.

As my partner comes to lay his head in my lap the peacefulness and the joy of the moment coarse through to touch me and I don't care why. I am just profoundly happy.