It’s been an eventful week, with Rudi returning home from Salt Lake, several stressful work-related issues, and my dad being in the hospital (he’s recuperating nicely, and we all hope he’ll be cleared to head home tomorrow). Kind of feels like a month has passed since Sunday, honestly. But there have been beautiful things in it, too, and these are three of them:

1. Rudi and I scoot out to see Quartet, a gentle, genteel film about a retirement home for aging British musicians, directed by Dustin Hoffman. The acting is superb, the varied musical interludes enjoyable, and the scenery sublime. I couldn’t ask for a nicer 100-minute escape.

2. Last fall when they cleared the area of trash, the city (or WMATA, I don’t know whose jurisdiction such things fall under) must have stirred up the terraced plots of dirt interspersed along the Dupont Circle north escalator and planted things in them. (I’m pretty sure they’ve only grown stringy grass or trash during the previous 10 springs we’ve lived here.) This week my commute to work has included the cheery nodding of daffodils.

3. Knowing that my mother would be stressed about my dad’s health and being away from my grandmother (who is at home, but still a bit fragile) and that Rudi and I had just returned from an extended trip of dealing with his mom’s health woes in Salt Lake, my brother jumped into the fray and headed east for a few days. I would have gone north and my mother would have coped just fine if neither of us had been around, but I think we were all grateful that Josh stepped in as he did. And it reminded me that he’s grown up into a good man (sometimes you might forget that when your kid brother lives 3,000 miles away and you see him only once a year; in my head he’s still 14 or 17).

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world this week?