Nice.
Out walking today I came across these incredible narcissi blooming against all odds amidst a tangle of brambles and nettles. I got right up close and personal and I can testify to their amazing scent. I have the stings and scratches to prove it. Beauty rears it’s head just when you’re least expecting it.
Life moves forward at an alarming pace.
Yesterday, with the help of a dear friend, I bought a car for my second born son. A recalcitrant student for many years, he has just spent (without prompt) the whole of Sunday working his socks off in the school library. First born son has waved goodbye calling, ‘Evening mother, see you tomorrow. Can we look for accommodation in New York when I come home?’ and driven off in his car to visit a friend. Youngest son is busy revising for his first GCSE in R.E.
We have discussed, during the course of the day, and latterly over our lasagne, the Da Vinci code, the Unificaton church and the cult of the Moonies, Bob Marley and the new biopic of his life, God and atheism, (always a hot topic in our house,) various friends and family members (hilarious), head rushes and teenage fainting, smoking, revising, I.B. versus A levels, the questionable value of A.S., course work versus exams, dog allergies, Dave Brubeck and Take Five, the Radiohead Five Step mash up, the Rodrigo y Gabriella version, being shy when you are really young, school being a passport to university being a passport to further study/a job and therefore whether it has or has not any intrinsic value, love and relationships, the hallucinogenic properties of nutmeg, Andy McKee…
Where did the years go? How did we get to here, this point, where we all co-exist, separate and together, living our own lives, yet inextricably linked. It’s nice. Nice is not an adequate word you may think, but I have decided it is. Nice.
I looked up the word just to check: (Chambers. iPad app)
nice /nīs/
adjective
- Agreeable, delightful, respectable, good in any way, satisfactory (often used as a vaguecommendation)
- (of a person) good-natured, friendly, kind
- Bad, badly done, careless (ironic)
- Forming or observing very small differences
- Calling for very fine discrimination
- Done with great care and exactness, accurate
- Delicate
- Dainty
- Fastidious
- Hard to please
- Over-particular
- Foolishly simple (obsolete)
- Wanton (Shakespeare)
- Coy (Milton)
- Critical, hazardous (archaic)
- Easily injured (obsolete)
And I’m still happy with my choice. The meaning is right, other than wanton, which in a family situation is obviously not the mood I’m looking to describe, nor perhaps coy, and I also do not use it in the ironic sense at all.
