Today's Epiphany

Last night, my mom treated me to a showing of Dr. Laura showing (whose views I enjoy very much) for a Mother's Day present. We enjoyed a nice dinner together (just us for a change) and then enjoyed Dr. Laura's insights on being a stay at home mother. It gave me a real boost to my stay at home mom's tank of energy and patience and made me realize (again) how special this time I have with my girl is. I had to take the final paperwork down to her preschool this week and as I watched all the parents picking up their happy children and watched my little girl wistfully watching this, I realized "my full-time week with her is ending soon" and it made me so sad. It's so conflicting because I know she will thrive in school and that it will be beneficial to her because she is chomping at the bit to learn and interact with her peers. But I also remember the pains and tribulations of school and I'm talking about kindergarten here - the frustration of not understanding something the very first time, the pain of being ostracized for no good reason and I need to start figuring out how to console her, how to make her understand she's good enough no matter what and how to be able to successfully deal with this kind of hardship. My momma bear instinct is to go into any situation and kick some ass for her but I know in the long run that's not going to help her. I need to pass that kick ass mentality onto her so that she can carry it on through her life but one thing I am confident about is this - she will survive without me. My parents passed that drive to succeed onto me but not necessarily that will to survive, but I had that drive from pre-K on and it has carried me through some crazy times. I. has so many of my behaviors in her that I am confident that she has that drive to thrive no matter what but just in case, I'm going to feed those behaviors as much as I can.

I'm just so thankful that I have this time with I., enjoying her, playing with her, kissing and chewing on her, and just showing her how much I love her. Most of all, I feel confident that she knows how much I love her and have fun with her. And that to me, is the bottom line of my life. With a friend battling terminal cancer, I view things differently now - what difference am I making in how many lives? That's the bottom line and I'm okay with it. I just need to remember that during the trying times...