This has been a week for flexibility. Many plans fell apart due to various hiccups. We took this in stride, but by the time Anna arrived on Wednesday, Sarah had a backlog of feelings to unload. Anna listened lovingly and attentively for an hour as Sarah talked and cried about it all. I love how much Sarah loves her people and how much she misses seeing them when her usual schedule is anything but usual. She often runs to make a card for someone if they are sick or sad, but this time she added to that by going outside to draw messages with chalk.
As the end of the school year approaches, we are once again hoping and praying that Sarah gets the same bus driver she has had this year assigned to her for next year. He is one of her most favorite people in the world and part of her usual school day routine. Even when that routine is not interrupted, Sarah still runs to make him a card or draw chalk pictures for him just because she misses him after she returns home for the day. The number of cards she has made for him probably exceeds the number of cards she has made for everyone else in her entire life.
Sarah also loves her piano teacher. Whenever there is a school day where kids get to dress as someone else, Sarah usually wants to dress as her piano teacher. She has been taking lessons for so many years I can’t actually remember when she started, but maybe when she was nine or ten. It started because Amy wanted to take lessons and so I signed Sarah up too. After a few years Amy decided to stop taking lessons but Sarah continued. What always impresses me is that she gets up to perform for her recitals and doesn’t seem nervous about it at all. She just goes up to do her best, always wearing clothing with musical notes, of course! Last Sunday Sarah performed her pieces beautifully, and it was the first time she sat at the piano by herself, without her teacher next to her.
My mom gave us all enormous sneaker slippers, which look hilarious, especially on Sarah and Amy because they are smaller people in terms of size and their shoes are the biggest. We have one picture where we are all doing splits, except you can’t tell because Amy is the only one who is actually flexible enough to do a split. The rest of us just look like we are standing with slightly wide stances. As I said, this was a week for flexibility – or lack thereof.
Yesterday Carl set up a Slackline and a balance rope to hold onto. Our moments of true balance were few, but our moments of laughter were many. It’s good that flexibility and balance come in many forms so that although we may not rock all areas physically, I think we do well with how we move through the various hiccups of life.
We had more baby bunny sightings this week, much to our delight. Sarah isn’t as much into the baby bunnies as the rest of us, but she does love pretending to be Daddy Pig (from Peppa) mowing the lawn. We all love watching episodes of Frog and Toad, but as we do that I’m laughing and delighting just as much in the story as I am in how much Sarah is cracking up. As always, she loves it when things go wrong – at least when it is in a story and not in her own life. We did get lucky in real life when we drove to her rescheduled piano lesson because we got red x-es at the tunnel.
I’ve been submitting my book to various contests. For a while I wasn’t doing so because I was sure I wouldn’t win. Then I thought that was no attitude to have because if I don’t believe in my book the why should anyone else. It is still entirely true that I might not win, but I did shift my attitude towards believing in my book more, and that feels good. It was also wild to submit to one contest that required using a site called Submittable. I hadn’t used that site since I submitted to She Writes Press for the first time. What a wild two years it has been! Speaking of my book, if you have read my it and not yet reviewed it, please review it on Amazon, Goodreads, and or Barnes & Noble. Every review truly helps! If you are in search of a good book, I highly recommend anything published by She Writes Press. I have been reading many such books and every single one of them has been incredibly good. It leads to imposter syndrome because how can I possibly have my book in such company? It also gives me a solid nudge to believe my book is as good as the other books I have been reading because SWP knows what they are doing.
Sending you balance, flexibility, and laughter as you navigate any wobbly moments.
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