The Little Tooth That Made Me Cry

Yesterday I posted on Facebook that I gave my kids a list of chores and shut myself in my bedroom to get some work done. Not five minutes later I was interrupted (for the first time, but certainly not the last) by a screaming Mathilda.

She was distraught and inconsolable. Her tooth fell out, and even though she has seen this happen to her older siblings repeatedly, she was totally not expecting it.

Neither was I.

Mathilda is five. I am about 99% positive that the other kids lost their first teeth at age five as well, but I'm also pretty positive that they at least made it into kindergarten before they reached that milestone.

This is my last summer of pretending Mathilda is still my baby before she heads off to big kid school in the fall. Somehow I thought things like this would not happen until we reached that stage. When I saw her in my doorway screaming and holding her little tooth, I thought to myself, "she is too young for this!"

But of course, she's not. I'm just not ready.

Bethany, Connor, Lucy and I rallied together to calm Mathilda down and convince her it was awesome to lose her first tooth. We reminded her about the tooth fairy, whom we assured her would most definitely respect her wishes to leave the tooth under her pillow. I hugged her and kissed her and high-fived her, and eventually she stopped crying and understood that she didn't do something wrong to make her tooth fall out.

Finally I got the kids out of my bedroom once again so I could get back to work. And then I cried.

I couldn't help myself. I had to indulge in this awful feeling of despair for just a moment or two. I know, I know. That probably sounds a little melodramatic. But I felt like I'd been sucker-punched. Time is going by too fast, and at moments like this I feel like I'm being pushed along by gale force winds.

Stooooooooooop! But it can't. It won't. Time and tide stop for no man. The only way to slow the clock a little is to live in the moment and to resist the powerful urge to cruise through life on auto-pilot.

Sometimes we need auto-pilot. Sometimes the only thing standing between us and the loony bin is auto-pilot. But we can't allow ourselves to be allured into its comfortable numbness for too long. We have to snap-to and sometimes work pretty dang hard to find pleasure and peace in the monotonies of raising kids and all that it entails.

That little bitty pearly white tooth knocked me off kilter a little yesterday. It kind of took the breath out of me and kicked my feet out from under me. My baby girl is five. She's going to kindergarten in a matter of a few excruciatingly short weeks. She's growing up and I can't stop it.

Slow Down, You Move Too Fast

Sometimes my life starts moving at a frenetic pace. Sometimes it's all good, and sometimes it's so crazy I just want a minute to breathe. I love to stay busy, and to do lots of things. And with four kids, and their friends and the rest of our family, we just simply always have stuff going on.

I crave change...whether it's re-arranging the furniture or a change of scenery, I like new, I like different, I like variations. Of course traditions are also great, and doing the same things many times until you know them well and are totally comfortable with them. But my whole life I have had this yearning to go. And I really really love to travel. I'm fortunate and ever so grateful for the traveling I do get to do, but there are times when I just want to be someplace really far away, or exotic, or to just experience something I've never experienced before. And maybe to try to, just a little bit, satiate those yearnings, I enjoy lots of outings with my kids. And activities, and so forth. And sometimes when things reach that frenetic pace (which is not all my own doing, as I said we simply have a lot to do to begin with!), something happens to remind me to slow down.

Often what happens is I get sick. I don't get sick often, but now and then I just reach a point where I simply can't do anything but lie down all day long until I feel better. Or else I'll suddenly have to really watch my spending (more than usual) and find that I don't have the spare money to do something I wanted to do. Or else, like happened on our recent trip to Ohio, one of my kids gets sick. We were on the tail end of a couple supercalifragilistically fun-filled weeks. Lots of late nights. Lots of sleepovers. Lots of parks. Lots of swimming. Lots of activities. Lots of sunshine. Lots of go-go-go. And truly it was all fun. But I sensed we needed to slow down. I planned on a slow down, just not until the day after Lucy got sick in Toledo. So our slow down came a day early, and there was some disappointment, but we all dealt with it.

I guess my point is that I'm learning to read the signs and heed them. Slow down. There is pleasure and comfort to be taken in days spent at home, relaxing or cleaning or just getting things done that need to get done. I'm learning to pay attention. If I don't slow myself down, the universe will take matters into its own hands.

I am Thankful for This Moment

Today I'm thankful for this moment. I'm sitting in my van, waiting for Lucy while she is in speech class. Mathilda is napping in the backseat. The windows are down on this warm November afternoon, I'm listening to the radio, sucking on a Tootsie Pop and writing this.

But all of those details are secondary.

The real point is that whatever I may be doing from one moment to the next, this present moment is really all I have. The past is gone, and it is as I remember it, whether that happens to be accurate or not. The future is uncertain, as much for me as anyone else. Only in this moment can I take control of how I choose to spend my time and how I choose to feel about it, and how I choose to react to everything else - the stuff I can't control.

Every single moment in this life is a gift, a blessing, something for which to be thankful. Certain moments may not feel like blessings, but it's all in the interpretation. Sometimes it might take a long time to realize a particular moment was a blessing. Sometimes we have to get through some really ugly stuff in order to appreciate the good stuff.

I try to remain cognizant of living in the moment every single day, and I am thankful for those times when I succeed.