What Did You Do Today?

Absolutely nothing of any real interest happened in my life today.  Nor did anything of any real significance happen yesterday.  With the odd exception of days here or there that hold a little excitement or deviance from the norm, absolutely none of my days jump from the pages of my life.  Well, at least at first glance they don’t.

Oh, I mean, yeah, sure, I got married.  That one was a biggie.  I had my first baby, and that one was a doozy, then two, then three, then…..snip!  That was a good day too!  But really, how am I supposed to find meaning in the humdrum and inertia of diaper changes and trips to preschool?

Sometimes I sit down in the middle of the day, when there’s a lull in whatever menial task I’m preforming, and ponder what I MIGHT have been.  I mean, I did alright in school, went to a top notch University, and then started my career as a high school English teacher at the tender age of twenty-two so I could change the world before I was forty.  Life has a funny way of working out though, and before I knew it, I was married (to the man of my dreams, forever then and now, I might add), had a mortgage and a baby.  From that moment on, everything I have done has been not for the good of me, but for the good of my family.  I’ve sacrificed sleep, and beauty and relationships and jobs and a good part of who I was, to nurture the lives I chose to bring into the world. 

It’s funny, because those words are so easy to say, and yet so difficult to do sometimes.

I don’t want to get up in the middle of the night because someone wet the bed. But I do it.

I don’t want to leave the house forty times a day schlepping this kid here, and that kid there while dragging a toddler. But I do it.

I don’t want to wash endless piles of laundry that miraculously reappear after only a day. But I do it.

Most of all, I don’t want to just throw on the most unflattering and unattractive outfit I own every morning just because anything else would be covered in sticky handprints or drool by the end of the day. But I do it.

I do it because these extremely uneventful moments in my life, are huge, momentous moments in the lives of my children.  When a child, for whatever reason, needs you at 4 am, your reaction to their need will shape how confident they are in your love for them, in your desire to provide for them.  How you show them love and patience, teaches them love and patience, and that is a big thing.

A child’s education, and your support of it, helps to mould their minds and to free them to think critically about the world around them.  The baby you drag everywhere on your hip, he’s learning to be flexible and adventurous, and that is worth talking about.

That laundry, well, laundry always sucks, but at least your kids aren’t smelly (well, they are all a little smelly)!

Last but not least, that outfit!  That outfit is your most powerful tool. That blasted outfit, you know the one, the dingy sweater over piling tights and your husband’s socks.  Yeah, that one…

That outfit allows you to get down on the floor and play.  It allows you to let your little ones come up and press their dirty cheeks to your thigh as you prepare their lunch.  That outfit makes you real, and touchable, and warm.  It smells of you, and is soft from wear.  Just like you, and that is unique.   

So, in the spirit of new found introspection, ask yourself, “what did you do today? Who have you become?” The answer to these questions doesn’t lie in your wardrobe, or your degree.  The answer to these questions lie in the hearts of those you’ve helped shape.