So Katherine turned 1 and I didn't even blog about it. Strike 1. She sort of shared Alex's birthday party, which was three days before his real birthday, five days before hers. Strike 2. I read all these things about people who do the whole shebang: themes and matching floral arrangements, little duckie centerpieces and alphabet-block ice sculptures and whatnot ... and I wish I could say I had the time or energy to do those things, but I don't.
I will remember how I scooted her chair up to the table and she leaned forward at the same time and her forehead went right into the pretty pink cake. And how dainty she was, plucking little gobs of icing off the top and sucking on her fingers with her eyes full of pleased confusion. I will remember that she was little, and sweet, and extremely tired because she'd missed her morning nap. I will remember how much fun she had splashing in the baby pool by herself because her cousin Andrew wanted nothing to do with it, and how she kept taking her sunhat off every time I wasn't looking. I will remember that my friends and my sister-in-law and my husband did most of the party cleanup before I even realized it was happening.
As far as the actual day, she was out-of-sorts, and it turned out she had an ear infection, which we didn't know until her 1-year checkup last week. We blamed it on teething, which has been our go-to excuse for Kranky Katherine since she was about 5 months old, even though she still has only two and a half teeth.
It's been a year, and it slipped by so fast it's scary. It could have been last week that I woke up in the hospital with this surprisingly powerful need to get my baby back from the nursery.
So different.
She. I finally got used to saying it.
As far as life in general goes, I've had better times, but I've also had far, far worse ones. I'm stressed, spread very thin and stretched like a rubber band some days. I wonder how I'm going to get it all done. I berate myself for things that I wouldn't blink an eye about if anyone else did them.
I've been told that distance between people is relative and variable, and I try to believe it. Because sometimes it feels like it's all passing me by, this thing called life that other people are engaged in while I scratch at the walls and over-update my status on Facebook and try to be better, better, always better.
Sometimes good enough is good enough. And sometimes it takes someone else to point that out to you.
So maybe I'm too close for perspective. Maybe I have to step back to see that I'm doing the best I can, which is, as I always say to Alex, what matters. But when you stop trying to do more, to be better, to eradicate mistakes and achieve perfection, do you stop progressing? And progressing toward what? Some arbitrary fantastical pinnacle of perfection where everything is excruciatingly boring in its perfectness?
A good friend of mine from childhood lost her mother this week. I miss her, my friend, and hurt for her hurt, and wish I hadn't lost touch with her. Her mother once took us to five different stores on a misguided search for hazelnuts so we could bake a cake for a French class project. She was funny, sweet, and real.
That's perspective.
Next week I hope I can do more, be better, but most of all, be more okay with the ways in which I fall far short of perfect. I love my kids, I love my husband, I love my damn dogs. Our life is good. We are happy more than we are not.
Surely, surely, that's a gift.
