Discovering A Friend

In the last couple of months, I have found myself spending a lot of time taking stock of my current situation. Not having a M-F, 9-5 commitment leaves me plenty of time to ruminate on how my life is progressing. My brain is an endless whirl of questions that leaves me in constant doubt that I am doing the right thing for my family. Should I do more to keep the house clean? Am I doing my best to prepare healthy meals? Should I set my alarm to get up early and be more productive? Should I really eat this donut for breakfast?? When I’m not constantly questioning my decisions, I am worrying that I am not taking full advantage of my time away from the grind to do things I never had time for before. Seriously, what happened to the baking, the garden full of fresh produce and gourmet meals?

And then I got a text from my best friend about coming to a birthday party for her daughter 2 ½ hours away. My initial thought was, “You will have just come back from the beach, you will need to go to the grocery store, you will need to do laundry…” (not great reasons, but legitimate nonetheless). As I was mentally going through my list of reasons to not go, I realized those reasons were just plain stupid. Here I was in the enviable position of being able to spend the entire summer with my daughter for the first time ever and I was contemplating cleaning my house instead of going to a birthday party where I knew we would both have fun. What the heck was I thinking?! And that’s when I realized that while I may not have been baking whole wheat muffins, I was giving my child my time and attention. Instead of loading the dishwasher, I was playing super competitive games of slap jack. Instead of planning a week of meals, I was going to library and signing us up for the summer reading program. And each time I made those decisions, I was rewarded with uncontrollable giggles, spontaneous hugs and the discovery of a new best friend, my daughter.

I know that soon summer will be over and I may have to reenter the daily grind and when that happens, I will once again make an effort to concentrate on my To Do List. But until then, I will continue to choose spending time for my new BFF. So here’s to more games of slap jack, more movie marathons and more road trips while belting out Queen!

(And as for the birthday party, we did indeed have a blast and totally rocked out to “Killer Queen”.)