My day started in a classically working-Mom kind of way: walking to the last day of school with a four year old in one hand, an 80-pound dog in the other, a cell phone, an epi-pen (G has severe allergies) my keys and some bags to pick up dog poop in my other two hands. Then G, on the playground, stuffed an entire rubber bracelet in his mouth and was running around chewing it like it was a wad of gum, while I was on the other side of the metal playground fence with the dog. (I can see him walk into school from outside the fence; I’m stupid, but not neglectful.) While I tried to get his attention to get the choking-accident-waiting-to-happen under control, Nimbus, the female Labrador our dog is hot for, walked by behind me and the dog tore my arm along said metal fence, resulting in this:
So I walked home, cleaned up some dog poop, washed off the blood, went for coffee, went to TranslatorXD lab hours, ate some bacon brownies, soaked up some creative inspiration, and went to pick G up at school. A mere two hours later, the bloody gash episode had turned to this:
Glowing-happy, popsicle-eating, summer-vacation-is-here gooey, loving little person. This is how quickly life as a parent changes.
I wrote down this quote from Bruce Springsteen, the all-knowing poet and philosopher (whose ass I have touched, in case you didn’t hear yet), and it really sums up so much, so well for me that I wanted to share it with you:
“We live in a tragic world. (Oil spill.) But there’s grace all around you, so try to attend to the grace. Grace is just the events of the day. The living breath of our lives. Woody Allen once said he found himself happiest when he was standing in the kitchen in the morning, buttering his toast. So you’re chauffeuring your kids somewhere and you think it’s a burden. And then something happens, and it (grace) is there.”
I really wanted to have a daughter named Grace. Very unlikely to happen at this point. So I I’ll try to show as much Grace to my Griffin as I can.
What are the simple graces that make you happy, bloody gashes and all?
