"Enjoy the little things in life, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things."
Author Unknown
LIFE IS FRAGILE
Look at my darling baby above. He’s 16 years old now and at a camp in Germany. How could I ever care if his clothes got dirty while he ate or if he didn’t take his nap?
Often at my job as preschool teacher I say to myself, “Life is fragile.” These young 4 and 5 year olds are still babies and their parents are figuring life out at the same time. I really feel for what they’re going through. I get to see so many facets of family life through my job, also as mother to three children and their friends, and lastly living in a close neighborhood where eventually you know, without searching or being a gossip, a lot of things about a lot of people. I am a very non-judgmental person who really feels for the personal struggles that so many people go through.
I have watched parents agonize over the little things. I have seen neighbor’s heart breaking move because of financial reasons. I have, just yesterday, been to a memorial service for a beloved baseball coach of my son. I have been an ear to friends that are in middle of radiation.
Not too long ago, when my oldest children were about 2 years and 4 years old, I hated dishes and I hated laundry. It just seemed like I was destined for greater things whether it was being an author or even back at my 3rd grade teaching job. I had gotten a paycheck and worked less than I did being at home with my two children. Then I read a chapter from Mitten Strings From God (not a religious book by the way). In one the very first chapters, Katrina Kennison talks about an author she was the editor for. This author, who was trying to survive cancer, but did not, wrote about what she would miss about life. She’d miss the dailiness of things. One of the things she mentioned was dishes. She wrote of the special things she’d miss seeing out the window as she did the dishes.
Well, from that moment on I decided to love doing the dishes. I didn’t want to wait for a tragedy, like cancer, for me to appreciate the dailiness of life. The laundry took a little longer. But now as a fold my children’s or my husband’s or the many boys’s laundry who end up in our house, I feel a part of their lives and see what they love and realize how much I would miss them if they were gone.
Life is fragile. They may not be in our daily life forever. Treasure the dailiness of living. Even if it’s found in the laundry or the dishes.
