Bigger Picture Moment: Careful What You Wish For

Welcome to Bigger Picture Moments, a weekly writing event sponsored by Bigger Picture Blogs. We welcome you to join us in finding the Bigger Picture amidst the hectic, everyday craziness in your week.

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Browsing the aisles for back-to-school gear had my brain buzzing.

Posters colored in school-bus yellow and chalkboard green towered above the bins of supplies, and the atmosphere was charged with excitement: the smell of school was in the air.  Moms and students darted in and out of the rows, checking things off lists and discussing necessity versus desire. 

My girls and I watched from a few paces back, wondering at the how-to's of this new thing called 'school shopping.' 

Because while I've done back-to-school shopping for ages, it's pretty new that we're shopping for my little one.  Mia -- a preschooler.  Her needs are basic and fun: crayons, markers, glue, kleenex.  And even though we don't need piles of products like we will when she starts kindergarten next year (choke), we still needed enough new things that it felt like a party.  A back-to-school shopping party.

At home that night, we regaled daddy with stories of choosing just the right markers and how the new binder is PINK!  He listened with perfect attention and enthusiasm, and then turned to me with a wistful look on his face.  "You know," he said, "it won't be long now before it's time to think about Halloween costumes.  Thanksgiving.  And then Christmas.  The school year starts and it all rolls right along, doesn't it?"

I smiled and agreed.  It just keeps going.  One minute it's back-to-school, the next it's trick-or-treating.

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At 6-months old, Mia was crying.  She wasn't sleeping when I thought she should be, she was still exclusively breastfed, and I was tired.  In body and in spirit.  Motherhood had slapped me around, shifted my life-goals, and frightened me.  I was completely convinced that I was no good at it.  Being a mother didn't come naturally to me. 

I vividly remember one June afternoon.  A Saturday.  Blue, sunny, mild, perfect.  Outside, that is.  Indoors, I was not doing well.  It was nap time but the baby was having none of it.  Screaming and wailing in her bed, she refused to sleep.  And it was making me crazy.  The books I'd read seemed to promise evenly scheduled days, naps, and meals, but it hadn't worked for me and I couldn't figure out why.  (It was as if my baby needed something from me other than forced naps and scheduled feedings...but that's too sticky of an admission for me to approach yet.) 

Leaving my crying baby in her room, I stormed out of the house.  I rushed past my yard-working husband, sank down to the porch steps, held my head in my hands, and cried.  Nothing was as it should be.  I didn't know what I was doing, and I had a screaming infant to prove it.  Calming my insecurities and frustrations took several minutes.  And it didn't erase them, it merely tamped them back into their container, waiting to pop up like a jack-in-the-box next time things went wrong.

Breathing a sigh of submission -- I'd have to go back in there soon -- I stared out over our neighborhood.  Next door, two young kids were playing.  The boy was kicking a soccer ball around while the little girl and her mother took off for a bike ride around the block.  I watched them playing, laughing, talking, living, for several minutes. 

It struck me.  It startled me.  It gave me hope. 

Those kids -- those happy, playing kids -- had been babies once.  They'd cried and not slept.  They'd confused and worried their parents.  Or, I could imagine that they had.  And yet, here they were.  Moving forward.  Growing up. 

Every day wouldn't be this day, I realized.  We wouldn't be stuck in this pattern of sleepless crying and confused schedules forever.  I would feel more even-footed someday.  My baby would grow up.  She would move forward.  Just like the kids next door.

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And now she's beyond those days.  She doesn't cry at nap times anymore -- in fact, she barely even naps anymore.  My wish has been granted. 

One minute she's a crying baby, the next she's picking out school supplies.

It just keeps going.



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