The Hug-Fix

Last night I was helping Katherine with a homework project. She was making a children’s book on Hurricanes. Her drawings were beautiful and we were both proud of her work. However, the printed portion of her work wasn’t formatting properly. She asked me for help and I couldn’t find the fix for it. Soon it got to be late and my frustration grew as I still could not find a solution. After some time Katherine looked at me and said, “Mom, it’s ok. It will be fine like this, but I think you could use a hug.”

“Yes, Katherine, yes I could. You are completely right. Your mom is being silly over this and your hug is exactly what I need. Thank you.”

Our family was at the movies earlier that day, and a man in front of me in the food line started giving a woman and her kids a hard time for cutting in front of him, raising his voice. I don’t if they did, but I can tell you from experience making your way with three excited kids with food in the movie line is no small task. I think that poor guy needed to be told it’s fine, and he could definitely use a hug while he waited a whole 2 extra minutes to buy his popcorn.

Sure, we wish everyone stood their place in line, and Word docs formatted just the way we wanted them to on command. But life is full of menial distractions and frustrations that will mean little to us in one year, let alone a week, or even days later. But, in the moment, it’s easy to make these moments more important than they are. From now on, I’m going to work on taking a deep breath once I find myself in one of these moments, and remind myself, “It’s fine, nothing a hug won’t fix.” Thanks Katherine! 🤗❤️