scribblechic

Monday. Just another day in a string of days that once gathered together create a week in a month, in a year, in a lifetime. Only today was no ordinary Monday, it was an extraordinary boy’s birthday.

My husband, daughter, and I woke our household celebrity with a sleepy rendition of Happy Birthday. We shared breakfast and a simple gift before sending the birthday boy to school, his head was full of holiday while his body was begrudgingly grounded in the business of school.

The call came late morning, a muddled message with creative pleas to come home. My husband and I responded with a temporary  reprieve from the routine of the day curious to uncover the story behind the request. Over a homemade sandwich our son shared the simple, suffocating frustrations of watching his birthday hours slipping under a pile of school work. We talked through the unglamorous truth that birthdays do not dismiss responsibilities and then shuffled a calmer pre-teen back into the fray of middle school with promises to preserve a piece of our evening for celebration.

A wish to feel extraordinary and the reality of the ordinary culminated in a lesson about responsibility and a stolen moment together with our son. It was an extra ordinary day.