I'm sure you're familiar with this quote. Its attributions range from Maya Angelou to a late 1990s greeting card... but somehow it still rings true. For today's post, I just wanted to share one such moment with everyone.
Without going into details, the last couple of weeks have been kinda rough. This past Tuesday was no exception, starting off quite nicely (details in an upcoming post) but quickly going downhill in a variety of ways that had me in a foul mood by early afternoon. The icing on the cupcake was a call from Miri's after-school care group that came in on my iPhone while I was trying to walk Mom through a problem with her iPad on my landline; they usually only call when there's something really wrong, so as soon as I saw the Caller ID we both had a spike in adrenaline.
I didn't know if I should laugh, cry, or just do that primal scream thing when I picked up the call and found myself talking to a perfectly healthy Pipsqueak. She had just realized that she'd forgotten to pack her leotard for dance and wanted to make sure I picked her up early enough to be able to take her back to her house to get it instead of going straight to the dance studio.
To make a long story short, I drove over to Mom & Dad's to deal with the problem (partially solved), then got stuck in some truly memorable traffic and got to Miri only 15 minutes before her class was supposed to start. I did my best to not let on how totally fed up with life I was right then and gently suggested a couple of ways to keep track of one's dance bag contents, and Miri decided it would be faster to change at home so she could run straight into class. Somehow, we managed to get to the studio only a couple of minutes behind schedule. (Dude, you'd better not tell them how you drove in order to do that...)
In the elevator, Miri told me that it was okay if I didn't stay because she knew I had a lot of work to do and that she was taking a lot of my time. I thanked her and told her it was alright, and that I could still stay if she really wanted me to because I had my laptop in the car -- but she said no, it was important for me to do what I needed to do and she knew I had been spending a lot of time there because she had asked me to, so I should go home and take care of the things I couldn't do if I stayed and waited for both her classes to finish. (FYI, AJ always picks her up & takes her home on Tuesdays, so I wasn't actually abandoning my niece; Mommy just can't get off work early enough to get the Pipsqueak to class on time.)
I was really touched by the Pipsqueak's concern and thanked her, and let her know I really appreciated her being so grown-up about it. We got off the elevator and with a quick, "Bye!" she scooted off down the hall to class. I just stood there for a bit taking in the (entertaining!) between-class chaos surrounding me... and that's when the moment happened.
Just as I turned back to the elevator, Miri came zooming back up the hall, wrapped me up in a big hug that lasted nearly a minute, and said, "Thank you, Uncle Brian!" before running back to class.
Just because.
Traffic going home was even worse (I ended up doubling back halfway home & used a different route) and my to-do list got even longer as soon as I checked my email... but somehow I was in a pretty good mood for the rest of the evening.
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