Loose Tooth

My youngest recently had a tooth loose that she was being careful with, you know, not wiggling it too hard, being careful about what she ate and how she bit into it, all in an effort to preserve the wiggliness of the tooth. Over the next few days, as people asked her about how her tooth was doing, she would open her mouth and show how wiggly it was getting, but was real careful to make sure that no extra effort was expended to try and get the tooth out, it was only going to come out when it was good and ready. You see, as exciting as it was to know that she was soon going to have a tooth gone, and all that entails, new smile, tooth fairy visit, pictures and getting to show and tell for a while with family and friends, it was even more exciting to anticipate that happening, and she wanted to savor every minute of it. Tonight, after dinner, my youngest and I changed into our comfies (PJs), and a small game of rough housing commenced. Now rough housing at our house is always a crowd pleaser, and this was no exception. We were laughing, play punching, giggling, tickling, and everyone was having fun. Until...you guessed it, someone got hurt. This was thankfully a minor hurt, but tragedy had still struck as my daughter's tooth, the loose one, was now really loose. In fact, it was figuratively and literally only hanging by a thread. Now you might expect that there would have been a flood of tears, some sadness about how careful she was being with this tooth, and how now it was almost out, but no, she felt how loose it was and then worked on that tooth until it was out, happy as a clam the whole time. As I pondered this, watching in amazement as she giggled at the new hole in her smile, ran around finding the tooth fairy pillow, and showed off her tooth to the rest of the family, I realized that she was learning to live in the moment and be content with what life threw her way. It amazed me that my six year old had already grasped what a bunch of adults never do, and I couldn't help comparing her attitude to my own. While I didn't fail this comparison, I recognized that there are some things that I don't exactly roll with, and that I can learn from the behavior modeled for me. It seems that sometimes I get so caught up in the result, that I fail to enjoy the ride getting there. Furthermore, I sometimes get so caught up in the plans I've made, I miss experiencing the contentment of wanted results by instead dwelling on "that 's not the way it was supposed to be happening". Shouldn't it truly just be as simple as enjoying where we're at? I'm hopefully going to remember that next time so that I don't get distracted.Until next time, blessings.