it was the nearness of you...

They call them "feel good" movies for a reason.


Not so much before, but definitely during and also for a while after, we felt good,  good in a way that none of us had all day long.   We watched a movie together.  During the film we morphed our positioning.  We'd started clumped, the three of us on the couch, my hand absentmindedly, tenderly scratching their narrow backs.   Then there were just two of us, him literally laying on me, as if I was the sofa.  At some point we were each alone in spaces throughout the room, but in the end, it was them together with the big dog, at a distance from me.  I watched them, while the movie ended and I was moved to tiny tears, partly because the film touched me and partly because my life touches me and maybe a little in part due to the big, beautiful full moon that was now visible from one of the high, pointless windows near the top of the house.   I think about these windows.  Too high to cover, letting in all the light that is lovely, but brings extra heat and a feeling of openness that sometimes seems like too much exposure.  However, they come in handy during the full moon, I realized.
In the film, the feel good movie, a person asked, "which would you choose, people or animals"?   
Ironically I was looking at my kids and dogs lying together in perfect harmony on the floor, just as this question was posed.   I looked at the moon then; bright, giving, mysterious, familiar, unchanging, alive, cold, distant, comforting and I thought to myself; I don't have to choose between people and animals.  I have no choices there.  I am stuck happily with them both.  This is the burden/commitment of being a parent and pet owner, though you chose them, once chosen, unlike lovers, they are yours for the duration.  
So what choices can I make?
Many.
Last night I chose to love the moon and if I could have, I would have touched it.
Today I choose to spend quality time with the sea... and I'm awfully curious about what my moon might have done to that ocean.
...this brings me to my point, the point I never realize I have when I begin to write anything; isn't it amazing that we can have both?  Isn't it amazing that we don't have to just choose to love only one, not the other.

I am forever amazed by the way the things I can not help but love seem to move one another, morph together...