a perfect moment

As I drove home today in my station wagon filled with cases of Pampers and gallons of Tide, I thought about the post I was going to write today. I was going to write about all of the un-funness of being an adult.

I was going to write about our seemingly constant need for stuff. Not fun stuff, just stuff we need in our daily life like orange juice, diapers, deodorant and toothpaste. Stupid stuff that costs lots of money when you add it all up. Money that we have a lot less of since I quit the job that brought in almost half of the money.

I was going to write about ridiculously expensive car maintaince and how depressing it can be to go from one kind of life to another. From one way of seeing yourself to another. How hard it can be to adjust your thinking. How hard it can be to say I can not afford that now, even though I could before. How I accidentally threw out the receipt with all of my CVS Extra Care dollars ($15 of them!!) and how my bread was moldy.

But then something wonderful happened that I want to write about much more.

After picking Abby up from school I decided to let the girls play on the school playground. It is a small, completely fenced in playground so rather than being right with the girls as I normally am at a playground, I stood outside the gate chatting with some other moms.

At first Abby played with one of her friends while Claire dug in the sand by herself in the corner. The warm sun felt wonderful and everyone seemed happy. Good enough.

Then I noticed Abby go over to Claire and invite her to play on the teeter totter. I smiled as I watched them laugh and bounce together, like perfect siblings. I waited for one of them to fall or otherwise annoy the other since this is normally how these brief moments of sibling harmony end.

But instead they got off of the teeter totter and Abby very patiently helped Claire climb up the playhouse and over to the slide.

Claire is very cautious by nature and she is afraid of the slide. She will climb up but she refuses to slide down. No matter how much we encourage her, she screams and cries until she is rescued. As I continued to watch from a distance, I thought surely this would not end well.

But this time, with her sister's loving encouragement, Claire climbed on to Abby's lap and went down the slide. They landed together in the sand, a happy laughing heap of girl in the warm spring sun.

Instead of playing with her friends, Abby choose to be with her sister and to take care of her sister. And Claire conquered her fear of the slide. She was so proud of herself. I have never seen her smile wider.

This parenting thing, this adult thing, is depressing and un-fun but every now and then it does have its perfect moments.