Happy

We drive home in the sinking light. I point to the trees, shapes cut from black cloth.

Leo, the two-year-old, shouts, "It's too dark!" 

Amelia, the seven-year-old, speaks, her voice small and shaky. "I just started thinking about something really sad and I don't know what to do. I don't want to be thinking about it. I want to stop."

Oh, the mind is a powerful machine. 

I don't say anything, but I turn down the music. 

She says, "I can't stop thinking about how everyone we know is going to die." 

This has come up before. 

"It is so sad." I tell her. "And yet, this is what makes life so sweet, that it doesn't go on and on forever." 

I turn the music up. Raffi's cover of What a Wonderful World starts to play. 

 "Can you play something else? Something faster, more happy?" 

I do.

A moment passes. "I love life." She says.  

"Me too, sweetie."