Last night, my husband had to unexpectedly go out of town. Though I don’t necessarily enjoy when he travels, I do find that it gives me more of an opportunity to bond with my kids—particularly when he’s gone over the weekend. When my husband is away, I make more of a deliberate effort (for whatever reason) to find activities to fill my time alone with the boys.
As soon as he left, I turned to the kiddos and said, “So, what should we do tonight?” I don’t know what it’s like in your house, but in mine, looms are all the rage. Yes, even my boys—3rd and 5th graders—are banging out those vibrant little bracelets like crazy. So I was not surprised to hear that they wanted to spend the night looming. But first, we’d need to go out and buy a few more packs of bands; their supply was running low.
Normally when my kids ask me if we can go out and buy something superfluous, I say no. But because I love the fact that they are currently more into working with their hands and their creative little brains than in mind-numbing video games, I was more than willing. We drove into town, grabbed six more bags of loom bands then headed across the street for a nice dinner. When we came home, we built a fire and got to work—all three of us. My 9yo, who is already counting down the days till Santa, put on some Christmas tunes to set the mood.
No TV. No video games. No arguing. (Okay, there was some arguing, but not as much as usual.)
It was a perfect night.
Yet, my mind was jumping all over the place. Rather than giving 100% to what I was doing with the boys, I found myself thinking about all the things that needed to get done:
I should really throw in a load of laundry.
The boys need to get in the shower soon.
Look at this mess!
I need to go food shopping tomorrow.
What am I making for Thanksgiving?
After a while, I became aware of what I was doing. So I stopped. I reminded myself that moments like these—unplanned moments when everything just sort of comes together perfectly—are rare. With that thought, I was able to rein myself back in so that I could be fully present in the moment. I decided that I didn’t care about the mess or the laundry or the showers. I put my thoughts of food shopping and Thanksgiving dinner aside—and I brought myself back to my children.
It’s so easy to get caught up in to-do lists and the schedules of tomorrow and the mess around us. But when we do that, we miss out on the simple pleasures in life. Happiness comes from the nows of life, not the should-bes and could-bes and will-bes of life. This is a lesson that I have to continue to teach myself—and last night was yet another reminder of the simple joy that is living in the moment. And I learned how to make a zig-zag loom to boot!
Life in motion 