Sometimes (pt 2)

I feel loved.

I remember to remember that this season is a collection of fleetingly beautiful chaotic moments.

In an elevator recently, an older gentleman chuckled at my daughter’s eagerness to press the buttons.

“It goes so fast,” he said. “My girls are 26 and 28 now.”

At the botanical gardens this afternoon, a young couple walked by pushing a stroller. As I melted at the sight of their teensy baby, the dad said, “It’s our first outing,” with a sweet mushy look in his eyes.

I looked at my wild toddlers chasing each other up the stairs and laughed, “It goes so fast.”

I couldn’t believe it slipped out of my mouth, but it is simply too true.

My three-year-old is learning now how to play board games, but is still struggling with the concept of accepting what you get in games of chance.

She asked my mom to play a game with her yesterday. My mom asked, “Are we going to play fair and square?”

“No, Oma. We’re going to play Candy Land.”

Perhaps life isn’t always fair and square. Or perhaps we misunderstand what fair and square means. My daughter almost always wins when we play Candy Land, and she usually proclaims her impending victory long before anyone else sees it as likely.

All I can do is keep drawing my cards. And I pray her cards keep taking her to victory.

In life we can either quit playing, or we can accept that we each will progress at our own pace. My pace might be slower these days, but I won’t stop. This is all coming out way cheesier than I expected. I suppose I’m in a cheesy mood today.

I’m grateful for my friends. I’m grateful for my family. I’m grateful for my home, my cats, my clothes, and my cozy bed. That reminds me, I had planned to go to bed early tonight, but it’s okay because I stayed up late to exercise and write. I am still working on how to find balance for these self-care priorities.

Today my daughter asked me what, “Give up,” means. I said it means to stop trying. I was tempted to follow my cheesy impulse and say, “We don’t do that!” But that’s not true. It is okay to give up on what doesn’t serve me and my family. It is okay to shift efforts in a new direction, giving up on the old one.

I gave her the first example that popped into my head. “You know how sometimes you ask a grown-up for something, but they’re not listening to you, so you ask again? And then maybe you ask again. But if they still don’t listen, maybe you give up on asking them and try asking someone else.”

I’m not entirely sure if she understood what I was saying, but it reminded me that sometimes we hit a wall and feel like giving up.

So perhaps to give up doesn’t have to mean to stop trying entirely, it simply means to stop trying something that isn’t working. That nuance feels important to me.

It opens up the possibility of experimenting with ideas and potential paths forward.

I will persevere with my overall mission to raise incredible humans and become the best possible version of myself, but I am giving myself permission to give up on what isn’t moving me towards that purpose.

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