Not a plot-driven thriller, this one. Still, Whit likes to read it every single night. So tonight we did. He can name each kind of truck and sometimes wants to do that, other times he wants me to read. Tonight, we lay on his robot sheets on his bottom bunk and I read. And by “read” I mean the two words per page, each of which accompanies a large color photo of a different kind of truck. I’m learning something myself! Or, I was the first 10 times I read it. On time 100, most of the learning has occured.
I had ordered the children some clothes from J Crew on sale, and today a pair of shorts arrived for Whit. They were khaki with red lobsters on them; he loved them, and thanked me. I told him I thought they would be excellent with a red tee shirt. He thought for a moment and then offered, “You know what else would be good? Red underwear with red lobsters on them. To go with the shorts. Yes, that’s what I want.”
Off I go to hunt for red-on-red lobster print boxers. Or not.
I am struggling today to stay in the moment. Well, I struggle every day, with varying degrees of awareness and angst. I guess today I’m really aware of it. Perhaps because I spent a while on the Zen Habits blog tonight, reading through the list of links about advice on happiness. I saw many quotes by Thich Nhat Hahn and considered that I ought to pull out his book again, given to me all of those years ago in college by Selden, my wonderful first therapist who altered my perspective permanently.
I realize it sounds almost comic for me to say I need to focus on mindfulness and in -the-momentness. I certainly do not live as though these things are priorities. But believe it or not I try, and tonight I read the whole My First Truck book without a single distraction, and then spent 20 minutes poring over I Spy Christmas with Grace (her, admittedly random, choice).
Today I’ll take my small triumphs. Reading the same truck names over and over is a kind of ritual of its own, calming in its tiny way. As is searching a page of random items for the third snowman. Small my triumphs are indeed, but today they are all I have.