The Diaper Bag Lady March 15, 2015

I’m just glad I wasn’t there to see it happen. Well, that, and for how the story ended. Fortunately, I was able to skip to the last chapter without reading the rest of the book. Usually that’s not how I like to do things, but in this case it was a blessing.

Mom lost something today. Something incredibly important to her. It’s probably going to sound pretty silly, but that’s not always the worst thing. Apparently she left her diaper bag in the cart at Target. She loaded the bags into the car, and got dear baby Carter all settled and somehow forgot to add the diaper bag to the list of things to put in the car before driving away. It only took about 10 minutes for her to realize it, but a lot could happen in that amount of time. 

So when the people at Target recognized her (from security cameras I guess) as “the diaper bag lady” upon her return, she cried. Not just a tear or two either. We’re talking full on bawl baby crying. They had the bag. All was well.

Hearing the story reminded me to pause and be grateful. Not just for the obvious things in life, but for the good people you may only encounter once. Especially as mom navigates this thing called pregnancy for a second time, she needs all the help she can get. And as hard as I may try, it can’t all come from me.

So the people that saw mom forget the diaper bag in the cart and did the right thing: thank you. I know she has a lot on her mind.

To the stranger who offered to pick up Carter’s teether at the grocery store: thank you. I know she’s starting to have a harder time bending over these days.

To dad, who woke up early with Carter today so mom could sleep in: thank you. I know sleep eludes her lately.

To a teething terror of a toddler I know and love as Carter, who took two solid naps yesterday: thank you. That hasn’t been happening lately, and your timing was nice since it allowed mom and dad a little time together.

From what I can tell, pregnancy isn’t an easy ordeal. And mom likes to pretend she’s always got it all together. But I know she needs help sometimes, and it’s not always something I can do. So thank you to the good people out there. You know who you are.

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Fighting Life’s Fires February 18, 2015

It’s never just one thing. I find as an observer of people that it’s usually many things that snowball into one of two categories. Good or bad, I look to find the silver lining in whatever may be happening in the world around me. But there are some days when that is easier said than done.

Because my time as an observer of people has taught me a thing or two about life. From the ground up, bad things happen to good people all the time.

Take today, for example. I don’t think a single person with whom I come into contact had a good day. Mom has been fighting the same darned cold for weeks now, and it’s really starting to bother her. She’s sick of being sick, she says. Dad encountered obstacle after obstacle at work. Dear baby Carter wasn’t himself from another lousy night of sleep the night before. But of that was nothing compared to what happened to my dear aunt Morgan.

It’s been frigidly cold here in my neck of the Wisconsin woods lately. Almost record-breakingly cold. I would go so far as to say 20 degrees has felt like a heat wave in recent weeks. So when the call came into my grandma (who was watching Carter while mom was at that place called work), I guess I wasn’t all that surprised.

My dear aunt Morgan fell on some ice that has been neglected near her apartment complex. She was in pain. She was cold. And she was scared. I could hear it in her voice how scared she was.

Apparently my forever mom got a similar phone call a few minutes after it happened, because within about 20 minutes of the original call to grandma, she was home from that place called work. She came home so grandma could go help Morgan.

The last I heard, the fall may have resulted in some sort of knee damage, though it may be too early to tell how serious. My first (albeit emotional) response to everything that happened in such a short period of time was that there couldn’t possibly be a silver lining to this story. Because it’s never just one thing, and today the snowball went very quickly in a negative direction.

That is until I thought about what happened in that time between the fall and mom’s return home. Sure, Carter was pretty oblivious to what was happening. He just went about playing with all sorts of things he thinks are toys (while simultaneously disregarding his actual toys). But mom and dad and grandma came together to fight the fire together. The moving parts all worked together to address the situation in an effective and timely manner.

I’ve heard of this thing called flashover in a fire. In simple language, it’s the point of no return and it happens quicker than you might think. But that didn’t happen today. Because my people came together and they made it work. They do that a lot, now that I think about it. The fires happen, but they fight them together and everything is okay in the end. If that isn’t a silver lining, I don’t know what is.