Day 37. 10 small moments
1. I decide to keep him home for the morning to ensure that he’s feeling well enough to go to school. My second one is already in panic mode and laying it on thick with the timely tummy and head aches… “I’ve got the black lung, Pop!”
2. She is dressed in a shimmery, voluminous skirt today. I can’t help but grin with the image of her covered fashionably in strawberry yogurt and tulle. In a blink she’ll be done with these toddler years, and I will hopefully still be around to tell her how fun she was at this age — how strong willed and… how Mega she was every single day.
3. I make a dramatic show of turning the timer to 60 minutes so that they can see that I will be busy for an hour. I simply cannot join their Lego fun before then…
4. I lasted 42 minutes. We unnecessarily bicker over the translucent pink Legos for way too long, but the small cottage I built is seriously kick ass.
5. I drive them both to school after their scheduled lunch and recess. I sit in the parking lot and feel relieved to have 5 minutes to myself to do absolutely nothing. I leave the radio off. I sit there. I sit. I slow down… In that brief time frame, I am not a mom or a wife or a sister or a daughter or citizen or part of anything. I simply detach and exist for one small moment… “But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.”
6. I sip a cortado while sitting in our Glendale cafe. The cold case of noms is a million miles from the cash register. I seriously forgot its existence by the time I was ready to order. I spend 15 minutes trying to solve this spatial problem before I text him and dog ear the conversation.
7. It still irks me, weeks later. It was unethical for them to post that photo of her without offering her a job. As if they were trying to engage in a comical and sophomoric battle and she was simply collateral. Yes, unethical. That, more than anything (and right or wrong), is what drives any glimmer of competitiveness within me — when the only thing I think I’m sincerely competitive with is my future self. How can one compete with time when everyone has a such a limited amount of it?
8. I stop at the new house and look at samples of reclaimed “Chicago Pink” brick. The colors are amazing and I appreciate each one. I can’t help but feel the irony of being empowered to select which color set will be mine, when everything is iterative and ephemeral, and these bricks will outlast me by decades.
9. I slow down and take my time chopping veggies and prepping the meal: chicken stew and dumplings. I know he’ll love it… It’s the Filipino way of showing gratitude and appreciation for someone you care about.
10. She drifts to sleep while we eat a late dinner. The conversation ping pongs over an hour long meal. We cover everything from the differing classmate opinions regarding half day absences to the next steps of strategic work meetings. These are the important moments that I will press my eyes shut to recall later. These are the moments they slowly evolve into adulthood in front of our very eyes.
