Delicious

On Friday I realized I was depressed. I was moving through the day feeling disconnected and unmotivated. I wanted to be sitting on my couch in my pajamas staring at the wall.

Sitting on the toilet, in a beige bathroom stall at work I realized why I was feeling that way.

“I’m depressed.” I thought to myself. It was the end of my cycle and I recognized I’d felt that way a few months ago at the same time.

When I walked out of the bathroom an Exec I’d just been in a meeting with walked past me.

“You ok?” He asked. Cheerful, curious, friendly.

“Yep!” I said trying to eek out a smile.

“You don’t seem your smiling self.” He said. No ill intent.

“Oh, just the end of the week.” I said shrugging and mustering a bigger smile as I made my way back to my desk. Recognizing the impact of being vulnerable and self aware internally has on the external.

“What are you depressed about?” Matt asked me later. I lay on our white comforter, looking at him in our sunny room with deep purple walls, leaning against our dark wook dresser.

“Nothing.” I said flatly. “Just depressed.”

On Saturday I woke up feeling connected again to the world around me. I changed in to running clothes and ran the 5 miles I hadn’t been able to run the previous day, but according to my training plan I’d meant to run.

I was refreshed in a way I’d hoped for.

It was the first weekend in many that we didn’t have any concrete plans. We moved casually through the weekend in the chaotic way you do when you are raising small children.

We watched the children eat popsicles on the deck.

I bought small plastic string lights and hung them up in their rooms. Flamingos for Ava, tacos and cacti for Emilio.

Ava biked around the cul-de sac next to us while Emilio and Matt threw discs, creating their own front and back 9. I watched as if outside my body thinking about where we were and where we are.

On Sunday we gave in to Emilio’s yearning for mini golf and played 18 holes, Ava strapped to my back because I can only handle so much chaos.

Monday evening I found myself in the middle of the house cooking dinner. Ava playing in various rooms around me, me lifting her up for hugs and flipping her upside down to hear her roar with delight.

Emilio being chased around by Matt a football tucked under his arms. His fits of laughter infectious and joyous.

In between rain showers Matt ran out to get the mail. The kids stepped on to the back deck to “cool off” in the drizzle.

I watched them dancing in the rain. Their small feet, bare and slapping the wet wooden slabs of the deck.

“Ahh, I needed to cool off” Emilio declared.

“I’m cooling off in the hot rain!” Ava slyly said, watching for a reaction, “I’m heating up in the cool rain.” She said again and I marveled to myself at her grasp of opposites and humor.

These are the moments I want to remember I thought.

These are what I need to be grounded in.

Matt brought in a box of try on glasses from Warby Parker. He sneakily tried to wear them as if they were his own without the kids noticing. But the keen sense of details he’s passed on to Emilio outsmarted him.

Soon all 4 of us were in our hall half bath looking in the mirror and asking each other if we liked the glasses we were trying on.

Ava on the pink step stool, the glasses often upside down on her nose. Emilio poking his head in to look quickly and then go change out to another pair.

The moments flowed in to one another and filled me in a way I needed.

That night I dreamed of our old house. I saw the rooms empty without us. I thought of what could have filled them since then.

I missed it.

But we are filling this house too. More rooms, more space, but more of us can fit in here in many ways.

Emilio ate the last of the cherry tomatoes last night that had hung on to the neglected plants we were gifted in June.

“These are delicious!” He declared.

This is delicious, I think.

This life we are building in the small moments that come together when I can step back and watch.