Turn that frown upside down!

So, Drew and I both felt like we kind of woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.  We both wallowed for a minute (ok, longer than a minute) and I’ve been sitting here feeling bad about feeling bad.  I called Drew to apologize, and in his way, he rattled off a list of blessings, highlighting our health and overall happiness, our awesome kid, our love of all things silly, and importantly, our togetherness.  We even get in bad moods together.  This made me smile, and then I read a blog post by another mother which led me to a book called Hand Wash Cold: Care Instructions for an Ordinary Life (disclaimer: I have not actually read this book, just its blurb) which caused me to finally digest a few more of the things that everyone tells you about parenthood.  This is not a glamorous job.  Asher doesn’t yet know how to say something nice like, “thank you Mama for staying up with me all night on Friday while my gums were on fire and sleeping with me on the couch like that for a couple of hours.  I really needed you and think it’s so cool that you came through.”  and you know what?  I’m guessing that even when he does know how to talk, we’re not going to be hearing a whole lot of that.  But I think the poetry of parenthood (humanhood, wifehood, etc etc) is still seeing the beauty in these gray areas.  It’s cheesy, and I’m not the first person to contribute finding-beauty-in-the-ordinary to the blogisphere, but I do think that the most striking moments can be the ones that seem…well, the least striking.  There is an undercurrent of vibrancy in menial life tasks, as illustrated by the gorgeous east facing light that splashes across the sheets in the morning, the clean comfort of warm dishes resting in the wooden rack, opening a dresser drawer to stare at the colors of folded shirts, and all the other little poems that pop up in our ordinary.  And if nothing else, there’s this little human that almost always has a smile for me, and has wonder marching across his face all day long. If that’s not enough to tell me to get over it, I really don’t know what is.