Life Is Like a Random Red Sock in a Tree

I am having a sad and disappointing few days. We’ve had a family loss and lost the house we wanted to a higher bidder, I’ve had some work stresses, frustrations, and minor disappointments, and my friends all keep having huge losses–and I finally just had a large pity party that I am probably way overdue for.

But I noticed something has happened starting last night. My kids have grown up a lot. I came home sad about the family loss and went to Selah’s room, and stood around sad, and she noticed, and I cried, and she hugged me. She’s almost as tall as me. She kind of supported me. It was like…a friend.

My Friend Daughter

Then tonight when the kids came home from piano and I was crying my mascara off after finding out about the house (and really mostly still sad about the loss and the pileup of all the things), they were all really nice to me and hugged me. Asher and Selah asked what was wrong, and sure, Asher got kind of bored and wanted to go to his friend’s house, but he did show he cared first. And Selah held me like a big person again.

And then Noah came into my room and asked if I wanted something to eat. He’s six, and maybe especially as youngest has always had kind of a baby focus. But today he focused on me. I said I could use some fruit, and so he went to get some, and he came back with a bag of gluten-free bread to ask if that was my kind of bread. (It is.) And he put it in the toaster all by himself.

And then he came back and wanted to know what I wanted on it, and I said to find the butter dish on the counter. But he didn’t really know where, so I found it for him. And then he opened it, and there was no butter in it. So I looked for some jam, and I finally found some, a brand-new jar, and accepted that it was strawberry, and I gave it to him. I went to my room, and I looked out the window and noticed a bright red sock in the tree outside, and that cheered me up a little. (What is it doing there?) And then a crash in the kitchen announced that Noah had dropped the new jam on its lid, and it wound up looking like this.

Welp.

So I went back to the kitchen and put a new stick of hard butter in the microwave, and Leon pointed out the cats were nosing around the broken glass so I ran off to get the whisk broom and dust pan to clean up the glass–and forgot the butter, and it microwaved for 20 seconds, and it was just a rectangle of wrapped-up liquid.

Wrapped-Up Yellow Liquid

So I went back to the fridge and put the liquid butter in it, crossing my fingers, and looked for more jam, and finally got out the gluten-free margarine (no crumbs in it) and opened it and it was empty. So I found the larger container to refill it with and gave it to Noah, and he spread unmelted margarine on the toast. He put an unwarmed neck heater thing on my neck and sat with me to chat. (In the background an unsuspecting Leon tried to get the stick of butter out of the fridge and squished it with his thumb.)

Feeling a Little Bit Better

And then Leon asked Noah to get ready for bed, and Noah said he was waiting for the neighbor kids to come over. It turns out they came over while he was making me toast, and he didn’t know it, and he missed them, and now they couldn’t play anymore. So he cried and cried, and I felt bad.

So I’m still a parent and nothing has changed on that front. But you know, these kids are turning into some pretty great and well-meaning people. And that’s about as cheerful as a random, unexpected red sock in a tree.

I Forgot to Take This When It Wasn’t Already Dark But That Sock Looked Amazing in Daytime