A Simple Pleasure

I am a sensualist. I like feeling things, engaging them. The bad part about sensualism is that often you become inured to the things that please you the most and you need more and more stimulation to double your pleasure, double your fun. But sometimes you are reminded that you do not need to strive as hard to get pleasure out of life. There is this Derek Walcott poem which sort of epitomises that rediscovery of contentment in the simple, the quotidian:

Alba

Dawn breaking as I woke,
with the white sweat of the dew
on the green, new grass.
I walked in the cold, quiet as
if it were the world beginning;
Peeling and eating a chilled tangerine.
I have many sorrows,
dawn is not one of them.

This morning I prepared my son for the day, stopped by a stand in front of his school to get some snacks for him, and prepared to take him up to the door to his class on the first floor of the school building. It's become a ritual, me taking him up the steps and saying goodbye to him as he enters the door. This morning however, as soon as he hits the gate, he high fives the security guard and then turns to me and tells me that he is going to walk in himself. There is nothing I can say that can begin to describe the mixture of feelings which hit me in that instant.

Suffice it to say, I have many sorrows, fatherhood is not one of them.