Lunch with Friends

Today I went to Nordstrom Cafe with Bam and M. We met up with this friend who was in town for less than twenty-four hours in the midst of some wicked crazy traveling she's been doing. Our lives could not be more different.

Patty is single, lives in the East Village in New York City (when she's not traveling the globe) and works in the high powered world of multi-national companies. I retired my lawyer shoes three years ago to work full time with the bedlamites whose antics color this blog. I rarely travel and never for business, except that my family IS my business, so I guess I always and only travel for business.

Patty was kind and dear with Bam and M, listening about pre-school graduation, favorite colors and hero factory bionicles. She actually ate the strawberry M handed her with her grimy fingers (she'd just eaten a brownie). She endured the unfortunate way smallish children sometimes treat furniture as their own private jungle gyms and laughed at how M kept wanting to go up and down "exavators"--and when she did, looking like she was surfing a wicked wave.

I got to hear about Patty's recent trips to Paris and Rome, to commiserate with her about too much travel, too many travel bugs and too much time spent nowhere near her own home. She showed us a picture of her darling niece, who M asked about the remainder of the afternoon, despite me explaining that L lives in Chicago. She then kept asking why L is in Soucago. Why indeed.

At one point, I muttered about the varmints who wake me in the middle of the night with their bladder needs and fears. Patty said, "yeah, but that's kind of part of the whole deal, isn't it?" and then she asked me if I was having fun, despite all of it. I know she would love nothing more than to find her own special someone and have a little bedlamite or two, but those cards have yet to be dealt her way.

Sometimes I joke about the things I never would have imagined myself saying, the "rules" I have to articulate (No lawnmowers in the kitchen, no sitting on your sister's face, no flashlights in the microwave, etc.) But my life is more or less exactly how I always wanted, even though I always imagined this life involving more sleep. I am richly blessed with a husband who loves me, who loves the Lord, who has a job that provides for our family's needs sufficiently so I can stay home chasing bionicles and Barbies, Harry Potter legos and Polly Pockets. I get to spend my time feeding the hungry and clothing the naked (although why in the scriptures does it never mention that these sort will ALWAYS be hungry, and might prefer to be naked?) Some days it seems that my day is filled with Sisyphean tasks that no one notices, that may not even matter. But really, I know that I am doing the most weighty things possible. I am teaching, molding, loving and shaping precious, insane and wonderful children that God trusted to my care. I am showing them the way HOME. I am giving them the tools they will need for life. What I am doing matters in terrifying ways.

And yes, Patty I am having fun.