Graduation Day

Today

Yesterday?

Today was Robina’s Graduation Day.

And I swear yesterday she was just my little girl.

Just another reason to seize the day, stop and smell the roses, don’t put off till tomorrow what you can do today…and all those other poignant phrases aimed at getting us to live in the present and embrace our too quickly passing lives.

I’m trying, really, really hard.

And I could use any tips on how best to do this if you’ve got ’em.

Thanks.

TTFN…

Wordless Wednesday: Shadow Me

Acceptance

As is usually the case, I got a little reminder of what’s important in life when I wasn’t looking for it.  It came at about 9:30am on Friday the 13th alongside a chain link fence.

After a week of going into work late after taking Robina to her multiple appointments as part of her Special Education evaluation I was taking her to school.  Her class had just arrived on the playground.  Her classmates noticed our van in the parking lot as they passed, and as Robi and I walked from the restroom, they lined the chain link fence yelling and cheering, “Robina’s here!”  Robi responded with equal delight, and raced up the steps to the playground gate.  The preschoolers were already there waiting.

As I walked back to my van, I saw her running from friend to friend and teacher to teacher giving her characteristic huge Robi-hug.  I sat there for longer than I normally would just watching.  And in that moment it didn’t matter what she could or couldn’t do on all the tests she took over that long and chaotic week.  What mattered was that she was accepted, liked, missed.  And whether we like to admit it or not as parents, we really do want our kids to be accepted and liked by their peers.  It seems so basic, and yet acceptance is so very important…and something I can be thankful for, for this moment anyway.

“Happiness can exist only in acceptance.”
–George Orwell