And then I rounded the corner and my kids were there and my husband and my big old beast of a car and it was like running head on into the truth.
Smack.
I have four beautiful, relatively healthy, sometimes clean and occasionally well-behaved babies.
I have a hunky husband who is willing to corral those babies while I take time to run my fingers over silky intimates I can’t afford.
I have a reliable mode of transportation.
I have a job that affords me a week off to go on vacation. I have a job that doesn’t discriminate against me for being female, or a mother. In this economic climate, in this political climate, hell, I HAVE A JOB.
I have access to quality food and clean water that flows out of a tap like a goddamn miracle and toilets that flush and a house that can be made cool in the summer and warm in the winter and clothes for our six bodies and neighbors who watch out for us when we leave. I have family and friends and a body and enough years behind me now to know how to appreciate them and enough years hopefully ahead of me still to actually do just that.
I have a job that affords me a week off to go on vacation. I have a job that doesn’t discriminate against me for being female, or a mother. In this economic climate, in this political climate, hell, I HAVE A JOB.
I do not, however, have a fancy shirt. And sure I could make a list here of all the other fancy things I’d love to have, but what would be the point of that? I have the one thing I need more than all that, I’m pretty sure, the thing that smacked me in the forehead and knocked the envy right off my heels:
Perspective.
Perspective is what says I don’t have everything, and probably never will, but I sure as hell have enough. And I don’t always have it, perspective that is, not as often as I probably should and certainly not as often as I would like, but I had enough as I strapped the littlest into his seat that keeps him safe and we drove off towards home-sans cami-to tell myself the truth, which is this:
Scratch enough.
That’s not what this is at all.
This, friends, is way more than enough.
Liz is a writer, blogger, teller of stories, believer in truth, and mama to four. She shares her stories on lizpetrone.com and all over the Internet, and recently finished a sloppy first draft of her first book. She can also be found on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
