I found this photo a few years ago and immediately went looking for a frame.

I found this photo a few years ago and immediately went looking for a frame.

It's my parents, bundled up in the front seat of a car, turning around to look at me. Smiling.

I took it during an ice storm that knocked out the power in our small Virginia town. I was home from college, already at the age where I was seeing my folks less, and my brother had bailed to stay with a friend who had power. Which, honestly, fair. 🥶

Day three. No heat. No electricity. Just three people in a cold house watching our breath fog up.

Then one of us (probably my mom) realized: who has heat right now?

Movie theaters.

We drove 20 minutes to the nearest one, bought popcorn, and watched Shakespeare in Love in a blissfully warm, dark room. (Yes, you can now do the math on how old I am. Enjoy.)

I don't know what made me grab the camera before we left. This was well before we carried fancy camera phones in our pockets and documented everything. But somehow I knew I wanted to keep that moment.

We were doing something completely ordinary, going to the movies. But it felt like the best thing in the world, escaping the cold and sharing a rare moment alone with my folks.

That photo is now framed on my wall.

I think about this a lot when things get hard — professionally, personally, whatever. I can hunker down in the cold and be miserable. Or I can ask myself who has heat right now, and go find it.

What's a moment when something hard made an ordinary thing feel extraordinary? Send me a note. ❤️