The last twelve months have been pretty quiet for me. The LLC I’m part of sold the house we’d remodeled; I directed The Secret Garden: The Musical with my mother; my husband received visa clearance from immigration, allowing us to move into an apartment. Not much stands out, really, my writing time as vivid as they days I live outside of my head. So if I had to choose a day to relive, I’d have to be non-specific, because most days sort-of blur together.

I guess the day I’d pick would be at the end of April, beginning of May, when my husband and I went down to visit my brother and his wife in Tennessee. My parents joined us a couple days into the visit, all six of us cramming into my brother’s two-bedroom apartment for two days of overlap, and then my husband and I headed back home so he could begin his new job.

What happened those couple days?

Well, that’s just it. I remember bits and pieces, but it’s all a bit soft around the edges. My sister-in-law was looking for hardwood floors for the house she was dreaming of buying and my husband needed to buy work shirts, so we went shopping. The big Mayweather vs. Pacquiao fight was happening, and I was interested in it, scrolling through news articles in the backseat as we drove through suburbs. My husband and I tried collared greens for the first time, and my brother and I played cribbage. He and my dad rode in a cycling event. My sister-in-law celebrated her birthday. We laughed at my brother’s ferret’s antics.

We all ate good food. We all hung out.

To me, times like those are the sweetest. Big events can begin to feel like a competition to see who can stay the happiest. Social interaction with strangers can tire me pretty quickly, but with my family, I can chat all day and all night, as they’ll attest.

Contrast that with how I felt when I was a kid. Back then, I found days like what I just described the most stressful of all. Aimlessly chatting, just relaxing, that was the worst. Why couldn’t the world leave me alone with my books?  Why did they have to waste my only non-structured time?

These days, out of my toxic school environment, I don’t feel like time wasted is time snatched, because it’s generally not wasted. All we did was look at home goods we weren’t going to buy? So what? We made jokes, we had fun. We got to see things we wouldn’t otherwise have seen. The day tired us out, awesome, let’s go eat something nice.

If I get stressed, my husband puts his arm around me, my dad makes a joke, and it all goes away. Let’s play another game, and pass a cider.

I guess re-living a day I can barely remember isn’t an exciting wish, but I’m not sure I could pick a better one. I get to hang out with my favorite people and do what we do best–eat, talk, and hang out, all in the lovely May weather. Really, what better day could there be?

Today’s prompt is taken from The Daily Prompt for November 16th: One More Time.