My husband and I drove to pick up coffee together before work a few days ago. This hasn’t been our usual morning flow lately, but it was dreary outside and we had a couple of gift cards from Christmas, so we thought it would be a nice way to start the day together. The coffee shop nearest to us doesn’t have a drive through, so we ended up going to a further location that does. It really doesn’t save any time, but does save us from having to unbuckle and re-buckle a squirmy, under-the-weather toddler who REALLY wants to be free from the car seat.
The coffee was too hot to drink immediately, so I waited to drink it until I got home. The venture was poorly planned, which seems to have become the “norm” for any spontaneous outing we’ve attempted since having our son. There was a long line, we hit construction traffic, and my husband ended up running late to work; but we had a good conversation and had a little bit of quiet time before the day really started.
Even by the time we got home, the coffee was still too hot, so I set it on the TV console and carried on with parenting duties. I didn’t think about it again for another hour, when I was trapped nursing my son in the next room, trying to get him to take a nap while simultaneously falling asleep myself. My coffee, still sitting on the console, was likely at a drinkable temperature by that point, and may have even needed reheating. Desperately hopeful, I started to rush into the nap by moving through the motions – read the book, nurse the baby, and lay him in his bed – so that I could enjoy what was sure to be an underwhelming, but solitary, coffee experience.
As soon as I started to lower him into the crib, little eyes widened with realization and horror, mouth opened to silent-scream/sob.
I picked him back up, returned to the rocking chair, and nursed him again. Sure, sure, some parenting experts would probably point to this as one of those “bad mom” moves that ultimately ruins the sacred napping schedule and sets my kid up for a lifetime of relying on me to fall asleep or whatever. But in this moment, he fell asleep on top of me, and I fell asleep in the chair, holding him.
I woke up to a quiet moment – my normally fast-moving boy cuddled onto my shoulder, mouth open and drooling; breathing synced with my own; his warm, small hand clutching my necklace. A moment of calm in the middle of an otherwise fairly chaotic day. In the middle of a time where we are fully embracing the insanity and chaos that comes with toddlerhood, we found a small, quiet moment to rest together.
Sometimes in life, we are running so desperately toward a goalpost that we don’t take in the current moment. If we can only get to the next thing, then we’ll be content. If only we had the job, the house, the car, the friends, the XYZ. We forget to live – to take in the small, fleeting moments that are constantly happening around us while we’re waiting for something else.
He woke up a while later, smiled, and gently patted my face. We went back out to the living room, and I found my coffee and reheated it. It was mediocre at best – watered down, over-sweetened with honey, but with the bitterness that comes from grounds that are heated too quickly. Generally, just a mediocre cup of coffee that wasn’t worth the $6 I paid, and wasn’t worth rushing over.
Life is fleeting. We run past small moments, cameras out, hoping for an Instagramable moment in the process, while life itself becomes a blur that you only remember once you’ve looked back at your camera roll. We make sure all of the moments are photographed, documented, and cataloged so that we can remember that they existed at all.
Sometimes we have to re-prioritize, to take a moment and reset. Sometimes we have to have reheated, mediocre coffee days. And sometimes those are the best days of all.
