In it together

On Friday I had a spontaneous adventure to meet up with my best friends for one of their birthdays. It was a long drive with two small kids, and I was taking Advil all day for my back and neck pain from the car accident. Still, it was one of those opportunities I felt like I just couldn't miss.

The trip did not go as planned, first, I left half an hour late. Then, I accidentally went through an ez-pass lane because I forgot I didn't have it in my rental car. Several wrong turns, a couple stops (one on the side of the road) so that Miles could go to the bathroom. But we made it there and back in pretty decent shape.

The thing that struck me most, was how calm I was. I usually tend to get stressed out, especially on long car rides with the kids. But there was one noticeable difference: My husband wasn't with me. When I'm by myself, I just roll with the situation and make the best of it, but when I'm with him, it's like he becomes a magnet for any little frustration and we fall into this dynamic where I start getting worried or annoyed about the situation, and he reassures me and calms me down. It made me think about how we often take things out on the people we love when they don't deserve it. I realized that many times, just his mere presence gives me an excuse to blame someone else or an object to vent my frustration on, instead of dealing with it. It's so easy and tempting to do, and yet, when I was alone in the car with the kids and had no one to turn to, I just took it in stride.

Yesterday was Father's Day, and even though the kids were cranky and I was exhausted, I let my husband take a good three hour nap. I thought, if I can recognize when I am getting frustrated or putting blame on him then maybe I can learn to take things in stride and relax when he's with me too. How much better could our relationship be if I were able to do that? What kind of new dynamic could we create? Old habits are hard to break, but I'm going to try and be a little less dramatic whenever my husband makes a wrong turn or forgets to take out the garbage. After all, we're in this together.

Safe and Sound

The boys after a long day

I know you may have been expecting the follow-up post to my previous one, and that's what I was expecting to write, but life, as it does, threw me a curve ball. So I'm just going to go with it.

Yesterday we were in a car accident. We were hit on the side by a driver who ran a stop sign through the intersection. The kids were in the car, as well as my mom who was visiting from Pennsylvania. It was scary, but no one was hurt. Everyone was wearing seat belts and the kids were strapped into the car seats. The other driver was apologetic, (I can't imagine what he must have felt like hitting a whole family full of crying kids!) I've been lucky to have not been involved in many accidents in my life, and so if it had to happen, I couldn't have asked for better luck.

Thank goodness we were driving a big minivan instead of our old little ford focus that we traded in only a few months ago. Thank goodness that we bought top of the line car seats for the kids, and the airbags and safety features of our car did what they were supposed to do.

It's a big headache, it's stressful, I have a sore neck and bruise on my collarbone. I've been on the phone with insurance, rental car, and tow service for more time than I would like, and the paper work is never ending. Still, my strongest feeling is of gratitude. I'm thankful that we came out of it relatively unscathed. I was grateful that my mom was there, not that she was involved in the accident, but for her help and moral support. Miles got to ride in an ambulance, and the kids played with a tennis ball in the lobby of the police station while we waited for our ride (thanks Baba!)

This morning I went to pick up our rental, luckily it's close by so I just walked there while my husband watched the kids (thanks for helping and going in late to work!) It's unusually cool for June, but I've kind of been digging the rainy weather. It feels refreshing, and it reminds me of summer camp and the countryside that I grew up in. The smell of wet earth and grass somehow always brings me back to that relaxing space. It was nice to get out and walk. I don't know when the last time was that I got to take a walk by myself with just my thoughts. It's a nice way to start the day, even if under not the greatest of circumstances. While walking, I remembered something that I learned while living in Rome during college: Umbrella-sidewalk etiquette. The streets are so narrow that when it rains and everyone is carrying umbrellas, the person who is taller has to lift their umbrella so that the other person can pass underneath. It's an unspoken, quirky little dance, but it made me smile to think of it.

Life goes on, things happen, and we get through. It's not what happens, but how we deal with it that matters. We can either complain about the rain, or dance in it.