The Warm, Loving Reunion

My Favorite Part of the Day

My sister and her youngest child. Look at all that love.

Once a week, I have The Late Shift at work, where I stay, along with some other teachers, to keep safe, play, and engage with the children who stay at school for an additional hour until their parents pick them up.

It is in that hour, that I experience joyous reunions, time and time again.

     The loving arms, the smile radiating from a parent’s heart when they lay eyes on their child after a day away from them…sublime. The child running from the far corners of the playground, ceasing their play, yelling, “Mommy or Daddy” in many different languages and derivatives of places the special people hold in their heart.

     The hug that lifts little bodies off the ground, up to lips that smother round cheeks with kisses and mutual, “I missed you” messages-this is the stuff of life.

     Oh, sweet, sweet love. Thank you for sharing your gift with me via these little souls and the people who love them. They love them through temper tantrums, screams of “No!,” doctor visits holding them down during the barrage of vaccines, taking them to swim lesson, gymnastics, older sibling’s violin lessons and any number of activities.

     And I…I get to witness the love, that good love that sticks through it all. I truly treasure those moments of reunion.

       I feel it with my own daughter. How special and beautiful to have this connection with her. She wonders why, she seems alone in her excitement to see her parents, where her cohorts seem indifferent or have “moved on.”

      There is no moving on from good love. Good love sticks. I have been telling my daughter that from the youngest age.

     If you have lost touch, never felt close to your adult children, your young children, it is never too late to begin today.

     Thank you for reading. Tell me of a joyous reunion with your loved one, be it a child, a fur baby, whoever has opened your heart and taken residence there.