We had a busy day yesterday, with school and tutoring and personal training and dog training classes and picking up dog food and on and on and on. My boys and I did it together, all of it. That’s not wholly uncommon in chunks, but yesterday was especially together. And if you know me, you know this. I LOVE time with my kids. I love time with anyone who I love. But my kids, they bring me great joy and angst and pure love. Just sitting in the car with both boys and both dogs really makes me smile without the least bit of effort. And it’s not because we are telling each other how much we love and respect each other. Because that’s rarely the conversation. But it’s just all the energy in one little space. And all that energy fills up every little molecule in my body with this magic potion, like I am complete. Completely complete. That is the happiest place in the world.
So we finally roll home, and it’s 9:53PM, and we had talked about doing a dance party on Xbox. So I yell with confidence and an arm swing, “Let’s do our dance party!” as if we do this all the time. And we don’t. Not all three of us. We rarely do anything with all three of us that is full of joy in three different minds. But I am in sales. And I was selling. Exuding confidence and excitement, without any signs of doubt.
I’ll skip the ten minutes it took us to get up the stairs to the loft where the dance party would take place. But we ended up with the Xbox in front of us, each of us with our phones and Dance Apps lit. And we were ready to dance. And you must understand that I love dancing. Any type of dancing. Happy dancing, latin, country, ridiculous drunk dancing, just anything. So again, twice in a couple hours, I am lit up with a smile that might break my face without me knowing it! And the music starts, and I am blissfully watching the blue hand on my dance character, Jazzy. I was bestowed this name by Just Dance, the leader of our dance party.
I flowed and tripped and didn’t care a damn about how I really looked… And then well, I had one of those moments I love, where things got a little slow motion, and I tried to follow the moves while noticing how freaking different my boys were. Mack is to my right, moving just his right hand with the phone in it. And Zoom is to my left, long arms and legs flailing, over dancing each move as if its voice had not been heard. He was a fraggle.
And I say this, knowing it might come out all wrong. But we were like the Three Bears. Mack was dancing way too little, Zoom was dancing way too much, and well, I was dancing just right. So I lied. I did care that I looked fabulous… in my own mind. That’s my story. Yep, sticking to it.
And it struck me how poignant these moments are. Mack knows he can’t dance. So his plan was to move his hand, one hand, in order to score at the game. It was brilliant really. And I am most proud that he knows his strengths. There is no way he was going to make all those body parts move like that, all at once. But he had agreed to play, and this was how he showed up.
And Mack was moving so hard, he might literally lift off the ground, but he would work way too hard, and possibly to the death, to win. And that was all he saw. He can dance. But mostly, he can compete. And if he has to dance to compete, he will dance the hell out of the dance. And I might lose an eye standing next to him.
How fun is anything that shows us who we all are, our differences, the way we respond to things! How poetic to see that we all can live in the same place with the same exact experiences and still be so very ourselves. We were standing 8 inches away from each other, with the same tools, looking at the same screen, listening to the same song! And yet, we all saw it differently, responded to it differently, got a different outcome and perceived our efforts differently.
How fabulous is life!? I know I seem disproportionately high at this account. But yesterday was an amazing day. And after two weeks of COVID and having only half my boys home… this is pretty much heaven… my boys, the dogs on the couch watching, music playing, various levels of dancing, competition and me—obviously dancing the best. And yes, I got that in the last line even though Zoom may have won more songs than I. And flailing may be the actual lesson here. Work your ass off and flail. You will probably win. And what freedom to do that! Flail and win! Maybe I love that more than anything here.
But the game can’t score style points. And since it’s my story, I don’t mind telling you, I did that almost flawlessly.
To you and your quirky family today! To those damn moments that could get by without being fully loved by you. Grab on. Laugh. See something incredibly small and blow it up so it’s unrecognizably special!
To you all today!
Love,
CC
Martini Meditations