Have I ever been having a lot of "moments" lately! I have found single-parenting to be the perfect balance of excruciatingly difficult and totally awesome, but some days the scales do, indeed, tip one way or the other. And since it's been too long since Rox and Roll injected some humor and some sweetness into your life, here is a list of some of those special times:
... that moment when I am drop-dead exhausted and need to sleep but realize that I can't find my cell phone anywhere. Since it serves as my alarm clock, I spend the next half hour looking for it in pants pockets, jackets, purses, and cars before I remember that my son was using it to play Angry Birds while on the toilet. In a total panic, I rush to the kids' bathroom, sure to find it sinking among the floaters, and I breathe a huge sigh of relief when I find it sitting on the tub's edge ... totally out of battery, of course.
... that moment when we're finally leaving early for school drop-off in the morning but then realize that a child can't find his/her mitt/library books/necessary hat/cleats/mind ... then, after minutes of frantic looking, said child either a) remembers that it's actually packed already; or b) finds it in the car on the now mad-dash to school.
...that moment when you get all happy to see another softball mom back in the bleachers this year, so you wave and yell out "hi, [insert her daughter's name]!" ... and then after she corrects you, saying "that's my daughter's name!" and fails to provide hers, you fake a phone call just to get the heck out of that awkward moment ... which you use to sneak into the school office and look up her name in the school directory.
... that moment when your seven year-old clings to you for dear life at bedtime and pronounces that he's never, ever letting you go because you're the perfect weapon for his bad dreams. I know: awwww.
... that smile of relief you get from your eleven year-old when you know that she's had a particularly bad day and you show up after school with treats. [This may not seem like a huge "moment" to you, but if you knew of the relationship between Petunia and snacks, you'd envision cheeks turning pink with The Happy and start planning your future investments in her snack shack chain.]
... that moment when friends you haven't talked to in a decade or two call you up out of the blue because they still care how you're doing, and you spend hours catching up on lives that have taken unpredictable paths and realize that, thank God, you're really never going to be alone.
... that moment when you sit on the sofa at the end of the day to watch "Good Luck Charlie" with your kids snuggled up next to you and realize that you can do it all, and well. That's the moment that carries you through the next day's worth of Mom's taxi service pick-ups and drop-offs, last-minute bake-sale requests, staying up late to wash a uniform, and your own middle-of-the-night wake-ups that necessitate a trip into their rooms just to look at their innocence while they sleep, to take a whiff of their sweaty little heads and to realize that they're only small for a short while, reminding you that these "moments," they are priceless in all of their forms.
I'm looking forward to many more "moments," hopefully of the sweet-not-stressful variety, and would love to hear yours as well. Happy memory-making, friends.
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