Ordinary Magic

     As much as it pains me to admit sentimentality, there is a Hallmark movie I love called "The Magic of Ordinary Days".  It is a movie in which almost nothing happens, like "The Shawshank Redemption", except for the plot, which is totally different.  In this story the pregnant bride gradually falls in love with the man she was more or less forced to marry.  The ordinary days worked their magic--creating love.
    This reminds me of the summer I spent taking our home movies to Walgreens, having the 8mm cassettes, for which we no longer had a camera, converted into DVDs.  We even had some old reel movies with no sound.  What impressed me as I watched the weekly installments of the newly converted is that it wasn't the special occasions that touched me the most, it was the ordinary moments.  My young kids showing off on the swing set or scooping the guts out of  pumpkins, the kitten playing in a box, these are the times that move me to tears.  What was so ordinary then is irretrievably precious to me now.  The children are grown and gone from home, there is no one left to carve pumpkins, the kitten lived to a ripe old age and is buried in the back yard.  The magic was in the ordinary days-capturing love.