I liked this quote I heard recently:
"What we choose to do in life is insignificant.
But it's very important that we do it."
A "typical" weekday 9pm evening at the Palacios homestead can usually look like this: As Chemo arrives home from work, Kate has finally just put her own feet up on the couch to find something that's not the news on TV. Aydan and Rylan "untuck" themselves from bed and tackle Chemo. One daughter decides to eat cereal, while the other daughter is showering. Bedtime schedules get thrown out the window with the junk mail. Everyone decides to eat cereal. Dishes pile up. Kids finally go to bed. ("someone" is usually still on facebook upstairs). Then sometime around 10:09, after Divers, Drive-ins, & Dives gets muted for a few precious moments of conversation alone, there's almost always one question that gets asked, (well two actually):
"How was your day, and what did you do?"
What did I do today? hmmm.....sometimes I actually draw a huge blank. I don't always actually remember. A few days ago I was asked the same question from the pedicure guy and I had the same "blanked out" moment. I wonder how he would have responded if I had told him that I had spent the first part of the morning curling my daughters hair for her Greek costume, spent an hour clearing out Chemo's car "space" in the garage of a bunch of garage sale junk because I decided I really didn't want to have a garage sale after all, went to see my daughter's 6th grade class "world fair" and her display of the country Greece, bought strawberries for my 5 year old that was begging to have a strawberry shake with his turkey sandwich for his lunch, cleaned out all our toilets, and then spent an hour on my firm fanny lifter cranking out squats and lunges. Instead I just said, "oh well, not much," and went back to flipping through my stack of magazines.
"Not much". What if my answer truly was, not much? What would that look like?
Rylan wouldn't have made it to preschool, or had breakfast, and still would have had sand in his shoes. I wouldn't have dug out the window treatment out of the garbage can full of grass this morning that I ripped out of the window in a rage two days ago. I also wouldn't have realized that clacker curtain clips are unfixable and wouldn't have wasted 43 minutes of my time trying to hose them off and attach them back on. But then I also wouldn't have found a $10 sunblocking curtain in Target to replace the clackers I tried to repair hopelessly with duct tape...
...And so then I wouldn't have realized I'm a thrift-decorating genius. My palm tree would still have 10 dead palms hanging on them. There would still be a football and a frisbee on the roof. I would smell because I wouldn't have taken a shower. My flower pot in the front would still have only 1 live flower growing in it. I'd still have 2 loads of laundry to do. There would be spit splatter all over my kids bathroom sink. Rylan would have claws for fingernails because they wouldn't have been clipped. There would be fingerprints smeared all over the patio door and shoes all over the kitchen. The vacuum cleaner wire wouldn't have been run over & ripped to shreds because I wouldn't have vacuumed...and so there would still be crumbs everywhere. Library movies would be overdue. I wouldn't have gotten two free laundry detergents because I wouldn't have cut the coupons. The freezer would have been disorganized. Homework wouldn't have gotten done. There would be light sabers all over the playroom, and batman toys all over the living room. The recycling bin wouldn't have been filled or taken out. There would be dishes piled up. There wouldn't be a homemade lunch. Or dinner. And there wouldn't have been kiss" cookies, while there wouldn't be milk in the fridge.
Sometimes it seems like much of my doings in the day don't matter.
Sometimes it seems like much of my doings in the day don't matter.
It might even be said that much of this stuff is insignificant,
or unoticable if you separated each task individually.
And in this season I am thankful to be able to contribute, and am thankful I get to be the one to do....
whatever needs doing.
...Porque toda en la vida esta muy significante. ;)
3 comments:
Your blog caused me to try & remember what my days were like when we were raising you kids...and I can't remember many specifics. Your blog will help you in the years to come to remember how you filled your days with significant, yet possibly not memorable activities! If you weren't there creating order & beauty & yummy goodies for your family...chaos and an unstimulating atmosphere & poor nutrition would reign...and the lives of the people you love the most would be so diminished...don't get weary in doing good!
you're kind of awesome. :)
um, this got me teary eyed. And its inspiring to actually "do" more than I "do" Love you
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