Yesterday was a train-wreck. Today is a heap of delights.
Yesterday my children bit each other so hard they left bruises, and the soundtrack to that is louder than you’re imagining. Today, they also bit each other. But I really felt for them, both the perpetrator and the victim. It is terribly difficult to share, to have things taken from you while you’re engrossed, to need something so badly it seems your best option is to purple your best friend’s peach-sweet skin.
Yesterday I sat on the steps and cried until my eyes puffed shut about how I can’t tolerate another second of feeling like I am coming up short for my kids— on energy, time, physical strength, attention, connection, ideas… you name the thing, and I was the worm that obviously lacked it and would never recover. Today, in a vertiginous event of contrast, the garden and kitchen kept both of my children completely engaged, with minimal support crew, for over two hours, a phenomenon that has maybe probably never taken place. (I’m wondering if the good juju had to do with last night’s accidental burnt offering on the bottom of the oven.)
Partly because I am afflicted with a need for efficiency and partly because my brain delights in searching for patterns, I’ve been making efforts to somehow distill the difference between these two days—to find what shifted the brutality of yesterday into the joy of today.