Last night as the dreadfully charming Mr. Right and I were snuggled in bed reading the new Harry Potter aloud, I turned to him (between Horcruxes and Hallows), pecked him on the lips, and said, “Life is good. This is fun. I love you.”

Then I got up to pee. And as I was walking to the bathroom, it hit me: I am turning into my parents.

See, this “life is good” thing is a family trait. Sitting around a dinner table, or on a beach walk, or watching a crackling fire, my dad will invariable say (and these are his exact words), “This is PER-fect. Now isn’t this perfect? This is PER-fect.” My mom, for her part, will hold her palms up in that lotus pose and sigh, “AAAHHHhhhh…” (This means she’s happy.) Then she’ll breathe in through her nose (pphhhhhh), eyes droopy with pleasure, and say with a soothing yogi grin, “Life is goood.”

When I was a surly and cynical teenager, this drove me crazy. I developed a theory that they were saying everything was so perfect more in an effort to WILL IT TO BE SO, than because it actually was. I mean, how many perfect dinners, beach walks, or fires can one person have?

But now I see that that’s not so. For my parents, hanging out almost ANYWHERE with their (actually pretty well-behaved and pleasant, if I do say so myself) kids was the pinnacle, the zenith, or–as my grandfather once accidentally said in a speech to an auditorium full of people–the “penith” of existence.

And now that I’m older and less cynical and have got my own dreadfully charming Mr. Right and Bungle of Joy, I realize that hanging out with them, appreciating the little things, that feels to me like the penith, too.

Janna, aka Happily Even After, 35, Seattle