Today my son fell asleep with his head on my chest.

We were sitting at the edge of a swimming pool waiting for his older brother to finish riding the water slides. He’d been curled up on a plastic lawn chair, wrapped in half-wet towels when I scooped him into my arms and cradled his warm little body into mine.

As his eyelids drooped closed, he nestled against me until his head was inches from my heart, separated from it only by my ribs.

I watched him like you’d watch a sunset, like you’d watch a flower bloom, like you’d watch your best friend say “I do”. It was that sort of captivating and beautiful and sacred and I would have missed it if I hadn’t looked down at the tangled mess of pool-water soaked blond curls right there pressing against my skin.

The world is burning down around us in a hundred different ways.

Temperatures are rising, on our planet and on our Facebook feeds. Economic disparity is growing relentlessly, my generation is dropping out of religion (for hella good reasons), my fellow citizens won’t stop killing each other, and it seems we’re all doing a shit job of picking good leaders for our churches and communities and country. I feel angry a lot of the time, and when I don’t feel angry I feel helpless.

But this afternoon a child born from a spark of my own DNA fell asleep with his head on my chest, and for one perfect moment all was right in this fucked-up world.

For one perfect moment, nothing else mattered. Not even a little bit.

This blog post is part of #write31days. This year I’m skipping out on a theme and going with ten minutes of unedited free-writing every day (unless I don’t feel like it, let’s be honest). You can read more posts from my #write31days by clicking here.