Monday

Yesterday I got to a lovely picnic, with fires and good food and friends and family. The day before that I got to accept an award for being a mother. The award was actually named "Single Mother of the Year." That ought to be a prime consideration for you single gentlemen out there. Just put that away in the back of your head somewhere if you're not a single gentleman. Or just revel in the amazement of me receiving such an award. OK stop now, that's too much. I felt kind of bad almost immediately after I received the award. At the award ceremony, I ran into someone I went to high school with, someone who I thought was always kind, funny, easygoing and lighthearted. I hadn't seen her in about 20 years. Her daughter was having a meltdown in the grass because she wasn't getting something she wanted. She said to me, "I'll never get a mother-of-the-year award; my kids are ..." and then she started listing a bunch of negative things that were relatively minor, but things a mother might spend too much time worrying about nonetheless. In a way it made me appreciate getting the award a little more; and in another way it helped me realize how it's so easy to look at other peoples' accomplishments and feel jealous, and that only knowing one tiny little portion of a story that might seem good but is really pretty unremarkable and also contains the unseen tales of heartbreaks, hardships, plenty of roadblocks, and endless struggle, casts a much different light, depending on the angle.