Things that are free

Photo by Scott Telle

Hubby and I are buried up to our eyeballs in the minutia of moving. Which means that right about now, everyone has their hands in our pockets.  The next person to dive in there might come back out with only lint.

I had to buy milk for the kid's cereal and noticed my hand shaking a bit as I ran my credit card through the scanner.  More money gone.  Perhaps the kids could use apple juice in their cereal instead of milk?  I have apple juice at home.  Would that be sooooo terrible?  When I mentioned this they both looked at me like I had just grown an ear out of the middle of my forehead.  So that's a no?  Fine.

But yesterday, at the gym, the instructor was working us very hard, sweat was pouring down my face, stinging my eyes, and my lungs were just not inflating.  She cried out, "Come on!  Oxygen is free here, so take it in!"

At the word "free" my ears perked up.  Something that won't cost me my first born child?  Love it!  And with that, I started sucking in so much free oxygen that I got light headed and felt like maybe I'd pass out and fall over, banging my head on the hard floor, meriting an ambulance ride to the hospital to get some stitches and an overnight stay for observation due to the concussion I sustained.  Suddenly, as the little white blobs exploded in front of my eyes, I realized that maybe for me, even oxygen isn't free.

So what is?

There are precious few things that come at absolutely no cost of any kind.  Everything is so interconnected that sometimes what seems free of charge (like watching the butterflies on the jasmine in my backyard right now) actually has hidden fees (like the mortgage I had to pay to live in the house with the jasmine in the backyard).

But my daughter's real laugh, not the fake one she uses when she knows something is supposed to be funny or the stilted one she uses when she's feeling overwhelmed, but the real one that is and has always been so rare - that one comes at no cost to me.

And the way my son still yells, "Mommy!"  Then dashes out of the classroom door and into my arms, nearly knocking me down every time.  That's free too.

And the warmth of knowing my husband is lying in the dark next to me when I wake from a dream in the middle of the night.  That one is on the house also.

And if I'm mindful of the air I'm breathing in, not being greedy and trying to take it all at once, but breath by breath, that is a gift as well.

So tell me, readers.  What comes freely to you?