Everyday wonders

Driving my favorite girl to school today, my head was full of thoughts of all the things I need to get done. It’s her birthday weekend, so we have a jam-packed schedule of festivities, which means much to do before we celebrate. I was running through my mental to-do list and chatting with the birthday girl about the cookies she would hand out to her classmates on the funny monkey napkins. Our spirits were high, although I felt my inner throttle revving up, readying my body and brain to rush from one task to the next in a balls-out effort to get ‘er done. Get all of ‘er done.

This is one aspect of myself I don’t relish. I’m always in a hurry, rather impatient, and tend to rush through the journey to get to the destination. I’m not a “smell the roses along the way” kind of girl. Perhaps this is common in overachieving busy-bodies. Or in the legions of other suburban at-home moms whose work is never done in ferrying children to and fro and ensuring there are adequate provisions to keep the troops clothed and fed. Or maybe it’s just me.

Anyhoo, there I was in the car with my girl en route to school, thinking about going to Walgreens to pick up yet another prescription; hitting the grocery store for kid wine (sparkling cider) for tonight’s kid party and for crayons for my girl’s science fair project; going to the gas station to fill up and get a quick car wash, as well as scratch cards for the birthday girl (yes, gambling starts early around here, and the fact that my girl requests scratch cards for Christmas and her birthday is an insight into her wacky personality); driving my other kid to school; gathering the stuff for the party-favor goodie bags; wrapping the gifts; sweeping, mopping, dusting, and freshening the powder bath since the party guests will arrive this evening and I’m the whack-job type who thinks the house must be spic & span before guests invade; and cleaning out the twigs & leaves that fall into the back seat of my car on top-down days, since the party guests will be riding with me.

Just when I thought my full-to-the-brim brain might overtake me, the universe intervened and saved me from myself.

As we traveled down the street, we drove under a wire that stretches across the road, up high. Maybe it’s a telephone wire, or perhaps a DSL cable. I don’t know; I’ve never even noticed it before, but it traverses the street I drive up and down a thousand times a week, every week. Today as I traveled that street, a fat squirrel was dashing across the wire, doing a squirrel tight-rope act. The movement caught the eye of my girl, who spied the bushy-tailed performer through the open roof of the car. We slowed down, literally and figuratively, to watch. I slowed even more when I realized that if that squirrel fell off that wire, he’d plop right into my car. While my animal-loving girl would love that, I didn’t relish the thought of it.

With no cars behind us, we slowed to a crawl to watch the rodent acrobat scurry across the wire, high above the road. His tail bobbed in the air as he ran across that wire, and I imagined his little squirrel hands (paws?) gripping tightly. My girl wondered aloud if he was nervous or confident in his attempt to cross the road, and that naturally led to her ad-libbing a few “Why did the squirrel cross the road?” jokes. Ahh, the humor of an almost-11-year-old.

Our squirrelly performer trucked across the last length of wire, safely making it to the other side. The punchline to the “Why did the squirrel cross the road?” joke that most tickled the girl making them up was “Because he needed to scratch his butt!” The squirrel was gone, and a car approached, forcing me to move forward. As we neared the school, my girl said, “Mom, I’m sure glad we saw that squirrel on the wire. That totally made my day.” And then I realized: while the jam-packed to-do list seems so important, and completing those tasks to ensure a kick-ass birthday weekend for my favorite girl is important to me, what’s really important is noticing the moments of everyday wonders, and savoring them. The squirrel on the high-wire smacked me in the face with that realization. My girl re-affirmed it.

Much has been written, on this blog and elsewhere, about how surviving cancer can make one appreciate life even more. I will never, ever, ever say that cancer is a gift or that it’s changed my life for the better or that there is a silver lining under that dark cloud that so rudely interrupted my life with disease, infection, and worry. Never. I appreciated my life and the bounty of good things in it just fine without having to lose my breasts and a chunk of my security along with them. I lived life out loud before cancer robbed me of my belief that if you do the right things and try your best to be a good person, that bad things won’t happen. I gave thanks for the friends and family and privileges that exist in my life before this wretched disease snuck into that thankful life and dislodged my sense of me. I realized that random fate of being born in the time, place, and family I was born into was as much a player as hard work in creating this charmed life, and I knew that before cancer entered and laid waste to my body. I appreciated the little things in life, and knew in my heart that it’s those things, not a new car or a big house, that lay down a basis for a fulfilling life; I certainly didn’t need cancer to bully me into realizing this fact.

Surviving cancer and an insidious infection didn’t teach me to appreciate life’s everyday wonders. But a squirrel on a high wire sure did.

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