Little things...

Enjoy the little things in life…for one day you will look back and realize they were the big things.

I saw this quote on a wall hanging at the florist when we went to order flowers for my grandmother’s funeral. I’ve been having what I refer to as “4th Quarter blues”… the last 3 months of the year are upon us… the holidays are approaching, bringing food, emotional baggage, a “Gammie” sized hole, and lots and lots of “STUFF”.
It seems that every year at this time I go through a period of dread… worrying about the holidays and how they will turn out, how will I afford Christmas presents? How will I survive after December when my health insurance will start to cost eleventy billion dollars a month? How will I survive the last weeks of this semester of school? We’re just past midterm and I’m panicked. What magical moments will I be able to orchestrate with NO MONEY for the benefit of my visiting family and for my 3 year old? In other words, I have a whole lot of worry about a whole lot of stuff that won’t look this big in years to come.


Real Simple magazine’s November issue promised me today that within those pages lay the secrets to approaching the holidays feeling organized, (notice it says “feeling” organized. ) ways to use credit cards wisely (I don’t have any) and 6 ways to avoid the common cold…(by the way, none of them are “Wash your hands.” What???)


Whether it’s from a magazine, television, or my own crazy mind, the details and expectations of the holidays just about kill me every year, and yet I don’t seem to learn from the experience. I just put the happy pills back in the cabinet and go on about my winter business, happy for snow days, making peanut butter pinecone bird feeders, and hibernating. January, February, and March all symbolize new beginnings. Resolutions, love, and basketball tournaments. Anything is possible. The 4th quarter of the year, however, is the time that budget projections either exceed expectations or fall terribly short of the mark. I’ll give you 3 guesses where mine will be this year.


Last year’s promises aren’t quite fulfilled yet, and the To-Do list for the last few months of the year is longer than at any other time. There are student loans to see about, nursing schools to apply to, guests to prepare for, expectations to fulfill, shopping to be done, gifts to be chosen, and bills to pay. There are toys to research, winter clothes to unpack and hang and organize, stuff to donate, things to be cleaned, and insurance plans to be made. There is more Anatomy, Developmental Psychology and Interpersonal Communication. (Which is an online class.) Doctor and dentist appointments, potty training, updating the resume, watching the job ads, and staying caught up on Glee. It’s all too overwhelming.


So I started thinking today that maybe the big things will just fall into place if I concentrate more on the little things. I don’t mean that I want to be bogged down in details; I mean that I want to cherish details, breathe in the moments, get pictures of the smiles, and bask in the delight. I want to see Santa and be thankful and collect pinecones with Grace for the Thanksgiving dinner table. I want to run outside for the first snow and watch the weather on Christmas Eve to see if they spot Santa and his reindeer on Doppler Radar. I want to make a pie crust with Grace using my grandmother’s food processor, because previously I had neither a food processor nor the desire to make a pie crust. The Flying Fork is a knife in my under-domesticated little heart. I want to make hot cocoa with marshmallows and eat it with spoons while we watch “The Grinch”, and add more marshmallows halfway through. I want to take Grace downtown with my dad again to see Santa come down off of the roof of Weaver’s, and see Grace’s excitement when he “builds” her a Christmas tree. I want to see my breath, and watch the stars, and stay in bed for just 10 more minutes with Grace, tickling her until she is breathless with laughter.


So I’m following the one piece of advice that rings true to me in this month’s Real Simple. The editor’s note at the beginning of the issue says “Even during such a crazy-busy time of year, this should be on every to-do list: Accomplish something that someone will thank you for.” She talks about a to-do list made up of people and gratitude rather than things. Maybe it’s time to be grateful for the little things as well as the big. I hope that I can remember to breathe deeply, be present in the moment and be good to someone else when things get crazy over the next couple of months. Only luck and grace has gotten me here, and nothing should be taken for granted. Things are not so big.


This 4th quarter, I’m going to be open to the idea of letting the to-do list go at certain times in favor of little things. I rarely remember gifts given or received from year to year, (except for when my dad bought me a car.) I have no idea what tablecloth I used or if my dishes matched, but I do remember who was at Thanksgiving dinner and how someone played the accordion, someone carved the turkey, and someone came out naked and threw a teapot at the table.


Years from now when Grace and I talk about how things were when she was a little girl we won’t talk about the overdue daycare bill or the lack of cable television or the fact that my sink is, at this moment, piled 3 feet high with dirty dishes. (Shhh.) It won’t matter that Anatomy sucked, instead we’ll remember that she loves to play “Duck Duck Goose” , knows all the words to “Fly Me To The Moon” , had a blast trick-or-treating and is getting her first “big-girl” haircut with Ames tomorrow. I just needed the reminder that these things are not so little, and I’m the luckiest person I know.