Last Friday, I got up in the dark at 4.30 as I usually do. I wasn’t happy. I don’t like getting up in the dark. But as I rooted around for socks (I know my socks by touch) I felt the socks I most love: cashmere, grey with blue toes and heels and soft as clouds, and when I found them I knew all was well.
After that, it was a day marked by other little happinesses. I was late leaving the house, but instead of having to run all the way to the station, a bus pulled in at the top of the road just as I got to the stop.
At the museum, the new lights in my room had been fixed and no longer switched off if I failed to move around often enough.
In the evening I celebrated Twelfth Night with my friends, and when I got home, the house was warm, I was welcome and the part I needed for my broken bike saddle had arrived.
And yet somehow, I went through the whole day thinking mostly about how tired I was and how much work there was to do without once realising how those many mercies – bus, lights, friends, home, bike parts, even the socks – had made it better, from beginning to end.
In the Bible, when Jacob, the father of Joseph, came to the end of his life, he blessed his son and reminded him of,
the Almighty who blesses you with blessings of the skies above, blessings of the deep springs below, blessings of the breast and womb
Genesis, 49.25
Now of all people, after such an amazing life, you might think that Joseph wouldn’t need reminding of God’s mercies – but he did. And I do too.
Perhaps it’s because some of my blessings seem insignificant that, even though they are many, I forget them. But if I’d stopped to think last week, I’d have seen that in tiny ways I don’t even recognise I am very greatly blessed.
And I reckon that even among the great joys of family and friends, the small mercy is often the best one, because at any given moment, at 4.30 in the morning, it’s almost certainly the one we need.
Although I often forget it, small things please me inordinately. These really are excellent socks.