Look for the Small Moments

In one of my favorite writing units I used to teach, Lucy Caulkins encouraged students to write small, defining moments, rather than travel logs or journal entries. It's really a very artistic approach to teaching kids to write personal narratives and could talk all day about this curriculum. But I digress. When I look at other mommy profiles and blogs, they seem to only share the big happenings in their families, trips to the zoo, trips to the movies, or even trip to Disneyland. We seem to only see the best snapshots of their mommy career.

But you're not fooling us.

We know that mommyhood is not for the weak of heart and we know it's not all butterflies and happiness either. No, it's more like we're fighting together through the war trenches, scrambling to make it out alive each, calling upon our sister to know they're okay while they scrape away at whatever demons keep them from making it out. Dramatic, but helpful in describing the life of a mom.

My writing lessons with Lucy Caulkins has really helped me keep things in perspective as I roll along my own mommyhood adventures. Instead of looking for the big watermelon events to happen, I am looking for the small, seed moments that show growth and strength. I am looking for the small seed stories rather than the big, watermelon events that I assumed happened all the time.

I've started to follow a few women that have started doing this in their posts or blogs because I think observing others daily triumphs gives us real expectations of what the day to day trudge could be, if we only have the right attitude.

Yesterday was a good example of how I tried to find those small seed moments. Let me give you a snapshot of the day.

Nothing extraordinary happened. Freddy went to school, I went to the gym with Cameron and worked out, we went home and he watched TV while I pretended to write on my Nanowrimo project, while really stalking people on Facebook. Good times, right? No. Just ordinary. We picked up Freddy, ate lunch, the boys had naps, I continued to pretend to write, and Fred came home. No magic. No special seed moments worth writing about.

And then dinner happened. We had chicken noodle soup with Grandma noodles (they're in the freezer section by the rolls). It was uhmazing and Fred even found a sparkling grape juice at the store and we tried it out. (They don't sell the brand I've always loved in Georgia, and he found the best one we've had so far.) We talked about being grateful and wrote some things down on small slips of paper and put them in the Gratitude jar we started for Turkey month. Still nothing special. We watched A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and gave the kids one piece of Halloween candy, cause we're evil and make it last the WHOLE year. Freddy and Cameron died laughing when Snoopy had a battle with one of the chairs. We even caught their mirthful laughter on video.

Still nothing amazing has happened. Now it's time for bed and it's chaotic as we bathe the kids and send them off to sleep, which they don't...for like an hour. And we fit in a show of Supernatural/Cheers which is how Fred and I unwind. See, we live very extraordinary lives. Nothing worth of mentioning. Nothing Facebook worthy.

But yet, I would take these days over the many ups and downs life seems to offer, and on a regular basis too. Can you imagine being up, up, up all the time, or even worse, down, down, down? Let's be honest we've had months or even years of one or the other with only sprinkles of regular days. But thank goodness when we can have these slow down times, where we enjoy a  regular day together, enjoy good food, laughter, and smiles. Makes it worth it, and it makes those regular days much more important.

So let's find the small seed stories that are happening that could bring fulfillment to the daily drudgery of running errands, carpooling kids back and forth, work woes, and family-speed-up-or-die moments. Slowing down and watching for these small moments will bring much more happiness. And for goodness sake, (talking mostly to myself) your story is going to be different, so stop looking for yours to match someone else's. Be happy that you are able to create your own.