What I learned today

I learned something new today… it was a quiet moment for a few minutes- I was by myself shuffling laundry (upstairs with the clean, downstairs with the dirty, then up and down again.) I was thinking to myself that the job of a mom is just one of moving things around. Moving dishes from the dishwasher to the cupboard- to the table then to the sink or dishwasher again. I move groceries from the store to the cart to the cupboards and to the mouths of little faces. Move the laundry, the garbage, toys, children… on and on. And then at this point in my thinking I was moving Steve’s stained, but clean clothes upstairs to the closet. I folded his brown cargo gap pants that I love and noticed the white bathroom grout stain on them that I notice everytime and think “why didn’t he just change his pants before working in the bathroom!?” but this time I saw that very obvious stain and thought “he came home from work and decided that he would spend hours chiseling out the old grout and put new grout in when he probably had other things to do BUT instead he did it for me because he loves me.” I realized then that Kaylee’s green pants and Malorie’s hot pink sweat pants that both have pen drawings all over them aren’t ruined, but have just have been engraved with a memory of when they decided to color their faces, arms and clothes with their darling scribbles together. I’m now okay that the pants are ‘ruined’ because in fact they’re not… they’re just personalized. I’m grateful for a small prompting that has changed my outlook on the job of a mother and laundry.