My Life as a Sitcom and Shoe Shopping

Living without television has made me recognize just how hilarious my life is. Today for example. If you edited every event in a 24 hour period and just took the snippets of funny for 20 minutes (10 minute commercial time), I would be laughing pretty hard.

You know how much humor is based on degrading others? Well, my stupidity when it comes to losing work on the computer is beyond comical. My attempt to write a scholarly paper on Asperger's Syndrome while talking to my 12-year-old about his lack of friends and obsessive compulsive disorders is beyond the brady bunch style irony. Roseanne, maybe.

Sometimes I get so caught up in what I assume is of value, when what seems to value really doesn't matter.

It is easy to get caught up in society’s ideas of what is of value. I heard a radio announcer proclaim the best way to raise one’s self-esteem is by being complimented by another human being. As the world’s standards continue to decline, what the people around us value may not be what we show. There may come a time when we have to remember and rely on who we are on the inside.

A few years ago my children and I were shopping. We were at a shopping mall in that mode I get in as a shopper. I turn into this material girl Wahoo! You know how it is. So I’m returning to my ancient roots where my husband was a hunter and I was a gatherer. I’m gathering.
That looks good, that looks good.

Oooo. My kid won’t make it through the fourth grade if I don’t have that!
We went in a shoe store. My children were occupied with looking at shoes and my youngest was cooing away in his stroller. Drew was about three months old. His bare little toes were sticking up out of the stroller. I love those baby toes that are so kissable. It was a rare moment to have all of my children occupied with something. I saw a gorgeous pair of tennis shoes. I thought “I haven’t had new shoes for ages; I’m going to get some.”

I was trying them on and admiring the graceful curve of my foot in the mirror. I was completely self-absorbed and lost in my material mode. When around the corner of the shoe shelf came an umbrella stroller and in it was a little girl. Behind her was a lovely young mom pushing gently. The little girl was about three years old and had beautiful long blonde curly hair and bright blue eyes. I was looking at my gorgeous foot in the mirror and saw them out of the corner of my eye. I heard her say “Mommy, mommy, look at the baby. Look at the little baby toes!”
Something said to me “Let her hold your baby.”

I thought, “Well, I’m kind of busy looking at my beautiful foot but, okay.” So I stepped over the try-on-your-shoe bench. It was kind of awkward but I scooped my baby out of my stroller and I bent down in front of this little girl and let her “hold” little Drew. She was thrilled.

You could see all the way to the bottom of her little soul as her entire being just trembled with excitement. She cooed, “Oh Mommy, look at the baby! Mommy, look at him, look at him. Look at his little nose, and his little toes, and his little tummy, mommy!”

She paused, cradling my baby and said, “He looks like the little baby we had, the one that died.”
My heart dropped to my knees! And I totally forgot about my new shoes on my gorgeous feet and I totally focused on this little girl and her mom.
I asked the mom “What happened?”
She said, “We had a baby that just died a couple of months ago. He would have been about your baby’s age.”

Sometimes we get so focused on things in our lives that are not really important. What matters came home to me in a hurry. There are some things that just don’t really matter a whole lot. But there are other things that do. I think that as we connect with people in our personal and in our professional lives we are able to make ourselves more whole. We’re able to help ourselves become what we are really meant to be.