Breaks

My niece Samantha was knee deep in an epidemiology paper this afternoon and about to go postal on the neighborhood. She's in the final months before graduating in May.

Jilda knows how to soothe the angry beast when she rears her ugly self in our mild-mannered niece -- she bakes chicken and her favorite rice.

When she walked over with her son Jordan, she was wound tighter than the short strings of a harp.

But I had new-age piano music playing and the table was set with glasses of ice tea with ice ticking in the glass.

Outside, the mama deer with twin fawns strolled up to feed. The little ones started running wide rings around the mama. 

It was the type of show that could make the most stressed person on the planet smile.

She seemed to be a little taller when they walked out headed home. A while later, her paper dinged in my email.

Jilda and I always scan her work to catch any obvious faux pas. It read as if it had been written by a graduate student. 

It's interesting what a break can do for you.