Pinkies Up
Today did not start out as a good day. I was in a vile mood all day, annoyed with friends for transgressions both real and imagined and just generally disgruntled with the world at large. The last thing I was in the mood for was sibling bickering and Dora the Explorer as my daily soundtrack. So of course, it was also a P.D. Day.
I really could have used a cocktail playdate today. Instead, I was invited to a tea party.
I didn’t want to play tea party. I wanted to surf aimlessly around the net, or read a book without pictures, or go back to bed until the stormcloud over my head had lifted. But I went to the tea party.
And, sitting on the floor of The Ladies’ playroom, holding my pinky in the air as I sipped my pretend drink, I realized something. I was having fun. I wasn’t grumpy anymore; instead, I was silly, relaxed, and completely enjoying myself. I might not have been sipping the Momtini I had been dreaming of, but my imaginary tea was hardly a pale second choice. In fact, I couldn’t think of anything I’d have rather been doing.
Certainly not sitting around, wallowing in my funk. Which is what I would have been doing, along with the laundry and the dishes and the million other day to day drudgeries if The Ladies hadn’t forced me to just let it all go for a little while. I’m embarrassed to admit that this is a lesson I’ve had to learn repeatedly over the years, that the way to enjoy this whole motherhood thing is to often put aside my resistance and my desire to be doing something else and just do it. I’ve learned it hiding in closets with my giggling toddler, waiting for her sister to find us, in rousing games of peekaboo, in marathon Monopoly sessions that were grudgingly begun, and today, sitting beside the cat, spooning imaginary sugar into a flower shaped teacup with a forgetmenot spoon.
Some lessons are definitely worth repeating, even if you haven’t forgotten them.