If you think about it (you don’t have to think hard) every piece of fiction, good and bad, starts with a “what if?..”
What if there's a school teacher that needs money desperately enough to start making meth… and unexpectedly becomes the baddest bitch in town?
Or, or, what if, there’s a guy who has scissors instead of hands?
Wait, what if there’s a pair of pants, but listen! listen! What if there’s a pair of pants but they’re magic pants, and they fit each of the five friends the same, even the short one?
What if everyone’s a cat and they’re all singing and —— actually, let’s not with that one. Too soon.
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Out of an hour of sitting on the floor in the corridor of your apartment at 2am waiting for the baby to fall asleep in the bedroom, only the first half is on purpose. The second is just dreading what your back is gonna say about standing up.
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In some ways life is just like fiction. Life also often starts with a “what if”. (Or is fiction just like life?)
What if I made an Easter Egg Hunt for Zoe and her friend? This is the thought I had a year ago. And I did. I only had one mom-friend at the time, which was fully enough for me. As Zoe got older I realised that playdates would be good.
This year I thought, what if I made an Easter Egg Hunt for Zoe and her friends?
So I did. While hiding 60 eggs in our cold and windy resident’s garden at 7 am on a Sunday I was thinking: What if I didn’t decide to do this a couple of months ago? I could be sitting on the couch right now, sipping coffee,.. but that one was definitely fiction.
I have very limited experience of throwing children’s parties. I don’t need it though, because my too much gene has my back in these situations. What I ended up doing was enough for people to Ooh and Aah and “How? Yourself?”. I was beginning to consider my sanity by 10 am. Had I been able to execute what I had planned, I might have been writing this from an institution somewhere. Everyone but one child (and his parents, haha), of course, arrived at least an hour after the agreed upon time. I feel there’s a lesson to be learnt there.
The day was so full of excitement that Zoe demanded to be placed on the couch around midday where she immediately fell asleep. Thankfully, the resident’s garden is on our floor. Made for an easy commute. Ugh, I love living here.
I had Mila in a carrier with me all day, she had a great time. I will tell you this for nothing:
From a window overlooking the garden this morning, someone might see a mother setting up a party, happy children, friendly grown-ups.
They might look at her and think: she has it together. Exhaustion sent my soul into an astral plane around 11 am. I looked at myself from afar and thought: girl, apparently you’ve got this shit.
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What if it’s simultaneously not simple at all but things also just happen? What if we’re all just doing our best and hope that our children are happy, hope to spend some time with interesting people, and that our potential isn’t fully wasted?
You’ve got this.