Present! At The Disco
A light bulb moment on being here now.
It was the first week of January 2020. The world hadn't fallen apart just yet, but dang were we close. Some of my mom friends were going to the art museum with the kids, but I didn’t want to go. After a long Christmas break going to countless family events, I wanted one day to not have to be anywhere or do anything.
I spent the entire morning on the couch reading through my new cookbook I got for Christmas, while Poppy watched StoryBots and drew pictures.
I spent the entire afternoon in bed reading a book called When Less Becomes More, while Poppy painted at her desk and played with her kitchen.
It should have been the perfect, slow day, and at times it did feel that way. And then in the evening, I ruined it all.
Poppy wanted to help with dinner, and I was annoyed. Cooking dinner was my me-time, and here, this 6-year-old demanded to stir and chop with me? How dare she.
Then a cup of milk was spilled on the couch mid-dinner, and I nearly lost my cool. I stripped the cushions and threw the covers in the wash, probably stomping around like a 6-year-old myself to make my annoyance known. (Oh, that's where she gets it.) I did not feel great about this.
When bedtime finally arrived, Poppy wanted to try out a new disco light bulb she got at a birthday party a few days before. I sighed. I should at least give her this.
So I took out the old bulb from the lamp on her nightstand, but that fixture has always been wobbly. I attempted to fix it, muttering some curse words under my breath as I couldn’t figure out how to make the wobbling stop. I searched the house for pliers, mumbled some more special words about being so sick of doing absolutely every single thing by myself, and that's when I gave up.
On the day and on the wobble.
I grabbed the disco bulb, twisted it into the wobbly lamp, and flipped it on.
GASP.
Neon colors enveloped the entire room. They swirled across the walls, down onto the floor, up and over the ceiling, smeared across our own faces. The pinks, blues, greens, yellows slowly rotated around the room in a mesmerizing splash, leaving us both standing there in the center, mouths agape.
Time stopped.
We snapped out of it just enough to make our way to her bed and laid down side by side. Tears welled up in my eyes as we lay there watching the bouncing spectacle in silence.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t very fun today," I said to her after awhile. "It’s hard being a mommy sometimes.”
She sweetly wiped a tear off my cheek and said, “No, no, no Mommy, I forgive you. I love you.”
I spent the day reading a book about slower living, cutting our kids some slack, letting go of control, and enjoying the small moments of life. And here at the end of the day — knowing I had the privilege of blowing off work to stick my nose in a book and hang out with my kid all day — I still felt like I failed completely.
I got on to her for wanting to help, I snapped over spilled milk, and I cursed at a light bulb for god's sake. Maybe I should have closed the books and painted with her instead.
But there, under the disco lights, I finally felt present. The colors snapped me out of the grey funk that clouded the day. The week. The season, if I'm being honest. If even just for a moment.
We were on the brink of a wild thing that evening, watching the colors dance across the walls. Weeks away from a virus, a lockdown, a complete halting of the world as we knew it. It would all change as quickly as the flipping of a switch on a light bulb.
That January evening was a precursor to what the impending pandemic would teach me (one lesson of many, duh) — let go of expectations and just be here now. Sit in awe of a dollar store disco light bulb, if you have to. Color and movement and light and coming back together to say I'm sorry and I love you. That's where the real disco is. Everything else is just spilled milk and wobbly lampshades.
love love love this!!