The potty training is going pretty good. Although you wouldn’t know it to see this picture:
Yes, that is an apple. On the back of the potty. I can’t even begin to explain it.
So, over the weekend, I took a little break from potty training and went to a wedding reception. While I was there I had the grand opportunity to talk to a dear friend and catch up on our lives. She is a career woman (very successful too, I might add) and she recently had a baby. It felt really good to talk to her because I felt like we had a little more common ground because of the baby. (It was a girl, too! So there’s even more common ground.)
Our conversation was buzzing right along, right up to the point where she turned to me and said, in a rather serious tone, “So tell me, What are you focusing on right now?”
I felt myself start to stammer. That question opened a big void in my mind. In one second I wondered how to answer. Was I supposed to be getting a PhD, serving starving children around the world, and helping as room mother to all of my school age children, while writing the next great American novel, painting a masterpiece, and writing a song that will be sung by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and accompanied by the New York Philharmonic???????
I said, “I’m focusing on having a good summer with the girls. Zoo Day. Library Day. Swim Lessons.”
The whole thing left me wondering, why did I doubt the importance of what I am doing with my girls? I am building people. Five people of good character who will never be homeless and will someday be upstanding citizens. I am building lives.
Very valuable work.
So, why did I stammer?
I stammered because while I am focused on building lives, I am also very focused on dealing with apples on the back of the toilet and dirty diapers and daily, nitty gritty work that can be drudgery.
It is the stay at home mom dilemma, isn’t it? We organize our own days. We decide how much we should take on. We balance the great needs of our small children, with the needs of the larger world, and our inner selves.
My girls are still very little and are still right in the middle of really needing me. So what is the answer to her question? What is my focus? My focus simply put, is them.
