Slice of Perfection

I want to tell you about the perfect day I had yesterday, beginning with taking Baby Girl to tot watch and then coming home to play "Find the Car Keys" which always have a way of ending up between the sheets with Lovey Loverpants who was off of work. I want to tell you how we then found the car keys and went shopping for the wee-est most edible pair of baby crocs ever manufactured, and how we had a leisurely lunch where our laughs were NOT punctuated with glances sideways to see if anyone needed something cut up bite size, or to ensure no napkins had been confetti shredded onto the floor.

I also want to tell you how I rode my bike fast fast fast and gamely across town to the indie theatre to meet Haddy and watch the marvelous Valentino documentary. I want to tell you about all those magnificent haute couture gowns.

But I can't tell you all about that perfect day which was yesterday, because it all has been eclipsed by this one moment I experienced in the car today. I was the lowest I have ever been on gas, coasting by the grace of the merciful God of the universe, watching the empty tank light light up like a star atop a Christmas tree...oh please God, please let me not have to stall out here.... We made it to the gas station on fumes alone. And then.

I looked back to see that little face, the sapphire jewels for eyes, the smile so easy and bright. That face said, We're having fun, Mama! Riding in the car, the whooooosh, the beeeeeeeps, the lights and honks, and slobbery bow wows leaning their heads out of those what are they called? Doors? Shoes? Applesauce?

It took my breath away, that unflappable spirit as revealed in that sweet sweet face that can change the course of the cosmos in the matter of a second.

Mother's Day, Episode #2

Dear Baby Girl, Today was my second Mother's Day since I got to kiss your sweet, munchy face. I think this day causes many people to take stock of all of the mother figures in their lives, but for your mother it is a day of a low-pitched anxiety as to whether she remembered to call all of her mother figures (and there are, gratefully, many) before 10 p.m.

What I did take stock of today, though, is how much you love the teeter-totter. As you grip tightly with your little play-dough fingers, your cheeks spread wide into doughy biscuits that cause your eyes to scrunch up in delight. You love the bobbing up and down, the looking back at me or Daddy or Playground Friend doing the same in syncopation.

But you also love the figurative teeter-totter, and that has made this season in your life a little bit exhausting. You teeter between giggles and tears, between independent and clingy, between busy busy busy and super snuggley. You are oscillating between sprinting down hallways and bumbling down them like a drunkard. And your moods. You trade them like a stock broker in the pit on Wall Street.

I had a lot of thinktime today, what with Daddy not having to see any patients and letting me nap and lounge and eat a lot of leftover raspberry brownies, and all those thoughts have culminated in the following: I am also on a teeter totter with you, and even though it is often difficult to fight the urge not to hold you too tightly on this ride, I take heart knowing that God is steady and constant and He is always good. His grace is sufficient for me as I am learning to be your mother.

Thank you for this last year - what an awesome series of ups and downs and sloppy dismounts it has been with you on board. Daddy and I love you a heart-burstingly great deal.

It has been a Happy Mother's Day. Thank you, Baby Girl.

Love, Mama

*** Brunch was better than these diletants would have you believe.

Brunch and Entertaintment by Baby Girl

My track suit and the car match but clearly this football does not. Um?

New Outlook

Back when I spent my days as a desk jockey or as an indentured retail servant, enslaved to paying off my credit card debt, I pretty much woke up every day thinking the same thing: What is the little kernel of incentive that is going to get me through this day? The answer to that question was, sadly, usually one or all of the following:- Today is two days before sabbath. - Today is three days before sabbath. - At least today is not Monday. - I have enough on my Starbucks gift card for a caramel Frappuccino.

I have had some good jobs and some jobs that filled me with a violent urge to hose Goo Gone all over the leftovers in the staff fridge. I have held jobs that I found fulfilling and meaningful and I have held jobs where I would have to give myself a Richard Simmons pep talk just to get off at the right T stop to go to work instead of just sitting there paralyzed, riding the Red Line to Alewife and back until someone called to see if I was ever going to show up or if they should dispense of my employer life insurance policy because I had died.

Now that I no longer receive a paycheck for the work I do, both as a student who is allegedly finishing her thesis and as a mother and wife, the question of what incents me to go about my day is no longer very relevant at all. I feel as though I always have a reason much bigger than myself to get up each day, and sometimes that is daunting and sometimes that is humbling but mostly it is part and parcel with whom I am and that has made all the difference. What I do is almost implicit in who I am, and I am okay with it.

Today I awoke knowing it would be a rainy day where Baby Girl, whose cough right now makes her sound like a seagull with emphysema, would also have to get some shots. I knew I probably would not get to work out as I had hoped, but I really felt at peace with what I knew about how today would be. I think that encapsulates this season in my life as a mother. I am at peace with what I know I am meant to be doing right now. I am waiting on some news regarding a job opportunity for the fall, and although it is easy to become jittery about what may or may not work out, I am trying to cultivate peace, to have the "patience of the saints" as Revelation talks about, and to find the little incentives barring trips to Sixbucks to get me through the day.