this is my life, and I'll take it.

Sometimes, life throws you curve balls.
moments of unexpected happiness and joy.
Moments of fear and concern.
What ever it throws I feel lucky that I have a good catching hand.

Let me start this post by saying that my girl is very responsible.
She is fiercely smart and stubborn and my biggest challenge.
But.
She does her homework.
She follows the rules.
She does what is expected of her without even being told to.
She follows SHOULDS much better than me.
So, when I got a text from her yesterday morning I knew something was wrong.
She had broken the rules to even send the text.
"can you pick me up early? I'm not having a good day"

So much ran through my mind of what could be wrong.

I dropped everything and went.

I tried hard to read her as she walked down the school hallway.

As we walked to the car she started to cry.

"thank you for coming. I just needed you."

CUE air leaving my body.
CUE prayers of thanks that I have a life where, if my daughter needs me, I can drop everything and be there.
CUE me telling my husband thank you. Thank you for providing that for our kids.
I am lucky.

She was fine.
She was overwhelmed.
She was feeling the pressures of life.
Her life, her pressures.
The thing about Chloe is, she never stops moving.
Her mind never stops going.
She finally needed a day off,
and that's exactly what I gave her.

So, back to the thank you...I respond:
"chloe, you've never taken advantage. You've never tried to trick me. If you tell me you need me. I will come. No matter what."
As she is crying I decide to tell her about something funny my mom said to me recently after I had been pulled over by "Officer shorthead."
I had ranted to my mom that day about what a douche he had been, and he was really, really short.
(why that mattered in my rant is beyond me)
My mom, in her wisdom had replied, "the next time you see him, you should tell him really sweetly that you'd been thinking of him, and that you got him a present {pause for effect}
and give him a new pair of platform shoes.....

Telling Chloe this did two things. It made us laugh hysterically and restart the path for her day.
It also made me realize later that, the reason I told her this is because that was how my mom raised me.
It's something she would have done to cheer me up.
She would be completely irreverent and make fun of the absurdities of life...and then life could be taken less seriously.
I think that was her lesson.
Life does not always have to be taken so seriously.

Chloe got that from me.
She got all of it.
I know that.
So now it will be my lesson to her.
Life does not always need to be taken so seriously.

We called the man, and asked him if he wanted to take his girls to lunch.
He happily obliged.
After, I took her to sweetfrog for frozen yogurt.
And we did this:
I discovered it this morning.

You can hear me singing in the background. If I had known this was all being recorded you would not ever hear me sing ;) You may need to close your eyes from the dizziness and you may want to cover your ears, but this is what I do. This is my life.

ps I questioned if sharing this would be invading her privacy. I really do try to respect them as they get older and might not want me talking about them. But, she does not read my blog...When I found the video I thought well, maybe someday...she might be happy to remember a day that she sang a duet with her mom. And to know her mom would do anything for her. always.