I Missed The Memo

It’s the day after Christmas, and here in our neck of the woods, it was a balmy day,  warmer than it has any business being this time of year.  We had an appointment in St. Louis early this morning, and our travels were taking us quite near the zoo.  Our calendars and the meteorological stars aligned to make this a practically perfect day to pet some goats, ogle some gorillas, and gawk at some giraffes.  We had a splendid day.

Throughout the day, I snapped a few pictures with my phone.  After each picture, my almost-six-year-old, who has grown up with the instant gratification of cell phone photography, chirped, “I wanna see it!”  And I chided him, “Stay in the moment!  We’ll look at the pictures later!”

I tried to meditate on this “stay in the moment” mantra when we got home and I had to confront the state of the house.  The last couple of days have been a near Bacchanalian blur of baking, shopping, wrapping, unwrapping, eating, drinking, and playing.  Consequently, it looks like a Christmas bomb went off in here.

But my kids don’t see the shrapnel.  They feel the joy and satisfaction of new Lego sets dumped out and constructed.  They don’t see the clutter; they’re reveling in a sense of magic and abundance (and some gratitude…with the exception of a small “Santa” gift each, they know their haul comes from mom and dad, and they know we work our asses off…but I digress.)

So this afternoon, other than sweeping up some pine needles and straightening the piles of stuff, I didn’t try too hard to restore order.   I’m not quite ready to put up one of those cutesy signs that says “please excuse this mess, my children are making memories”, but my kids have had a happy day, one which I hope they will remember.  While some people may be able to manage perpetual tidiness while making time to take their kids on super-fun field trips, I am not one of them.  We’ll be staying in this messy moment a little bit longer, and I am totally OK with that.

P.S.
If you try to stay in the moment and don’t look at all your pictures right away, a few hours later,  Google Photo Assistant will work its magic and randomly reward you with a stylized picture of a penguin.

Memo received.