Reality Check

My daughter was invited to a birthday celebration at Worlds of Fun with one of her really good friends.  She was so excited in the days leading up to this weekend that she was counting down.  “Five more days!”  “One more day!”  “Oh my god, I’m so excited!!”

And then came the night before they were leaving… She cried, and then she cried some more this morning.  “I’m gonna miss you so much!”  “I feel sick.”  (She did, in fact, puke twice this morning.)

I finally got her (sort of) psyched up into leaving and got her into her friend’s car. 

And then came the onslaught.  She has texted me 174 times in the past five hours.  I counted.   She called me six times, and we were on the phone for the better part of three hours in total.

Did I do something wrong in making her so close to me?  Should I have ripped off the bandaid and sent her to sleepaway camp (against her wishes) every summer of her life??

The one time I DID send her to day camp, I had to drive to Iowa to pick her up on the sleepover night, because she was having none of that. 

So the hard truth is that no matter how much we hype things up in our minds, reality happens at some point.  Many, many things are great in theory and mediocre in real-time. 

Another example?  Sure

I had a massage today.  Don’t get me wrong, it was lovely,  but … I totally had to fart the whole time, and I couldn’t, because, well, it’s a small room and that’s not cool.   Also, I forgot to shave my legs, so I was a little neurotic about the prickly business down there.  Oh, and I’m getting sick and my sinus are all congested, so at one point, I thought my nose was literally going to drip onto the floor. 

Too much information?  Probably.  But that’s the crux of reality versus the ideal. 

Life is good, but reality sometimes gets in the way of our perfect little image of how things should be.