LIfe is good

In front of me driving home from dropping off my son at school this morning was an old red jeep. The wrangler model. The one many of us maybe fantasized about having in high-school. Soft top, open on all four sides. Compact enough and somewhere between a convertible sports car and a four wheel ride. An unpretentious, laid back cool car that sits somewhere on the spectrum of freedom and security. Today was a bit too cold for the sides to be off and the top to be down but I noticed it anyway mostly because I was trailing behind it for the eight or so miles back to my house and mostly because as I was finally left alone in my car, at not even 7:45 in the morning, I turned up the music, finally able to listen to the songs I chose to blast and sing, belt freely out loud with my hand thumping the wheel - I stared out at the signature spare tire that hung onto the back of this red jeep like an old school backpack: "Life is good" was branded in bright white bubble letters across the cover that apparently was custom to fit the tire.
Life is good. And when I stopped at a light, I got close enough behind to even see the slogan's familiar commercial trademark. Funny.
But it got me thinking about the driver. I could see into the front seat and noticed something beaded and dangling from his front mirror. Did he remember his anthem that he so casually called out to passersby and drivers everywhere. Life is good. After all, he emblazoned it on the back of his car and rode around his world like an advertisement, a mobile banner. It was not a bad message to be reminded of. Especially some days when sealed up inside your car, doing the perfunctory drive, lost in whatever initial mood set you off that morning.
I looked up again and smiled. It's a good thing to have reminders because life is good, mostly good. It wants to be good inherently. It wants to recognize the places in the world where good can even be good enough. My life is good, I reflected. Now I was sharing, instead of my assumptions and my tendencies toward comparisons and my wondering about the driver in the red jeep. Life's richness was all around me.
It is filled with the banter of 3 growing boys and their noises and pleas for my attention constantly. That is good, I suppose.
It is filled with the conversations I get stirred up in with my husband and his ideas about the world and his projects and yes at some point he will move the beautiful new fixture over the dining room table eventually. And it is good that he can do that and I don't have to call somebody to do it.
It is filled with the beauty of still getting up at night sometimes with a toddler, but also with a young man toddling into adolescence. It is good that he still wakes me up too sometimes to tell me he needs something because in a few short years that will be a memory in a story only.
It is good that I am healthy. Life wants to be healthy, doesn't it?
It is good that I make eye contact, even with those who might not want it. Life wants contact always. I know that.
It is good to say things like I was grateful for the reminder. Certainly, it is not only easy but damn automatic for us to shield ourselves up in our cars warding off the sounds, smells the sights or the way that life always wants to reach out and touch you like I chose to see that it did to me this morning. Reach out with it's car tire messages which if you chose to you can make the turn and never hear it, see it or think about it. Or you can sit in front of it, remembering what you might have forgotten when you drove out of your driveway this morning.