I'm going to tell you a story:

 I would say I'm relaxed in my parenting Emma. She and I are tuned to one another. She is free to go out into the world and interact with it as she feels necessary and I am there to support her and to guide her. I also might push the boundaries of what is acceptable exploration for a child in public in the name of her discovery. Maybe I'll let her hide in the clothes racks at the mall or gallop down the aisle at our grocery store. She can take her shoes off at the river, climb rocks at the park, wander off the trails on our hikes. She has always had free access in whatever house we lived in, and continues to learn and test the boundaries with that.

 Anyway, one day in early winter last year at the end of a bitter battle with my car's leaking tires that spanned many years, Emma and I brought the car to a discount tire shop. We were there early but there were still cars ahead of us and the wait was long. It was cold, gray, and windy outside and we seemed to be stuck in that 10-by-20 waiting hall, walls lined with display tires and floors messy with grime and dirty boot tracks. 

There we sat, we sat there, we two. We sat in that room- we had nothing to do. (name that book!) I went through the contents of my coat pockets: some lint, a few coins, a hair tie. Nothing of lasting interest. Emma had begun to explore the tires and we talk about the letters in the words in the descriptions on the labels. More time passed and soon Emma climbed into my lap then up to the tire display on the wall, the lowest row that sat on a ledge about two feet off the ground. The tires were lined up to make a neat but unintentional tunnel for a toddler. She poked in to have a look around, came out, looked above, in again, touched all around, her hands graying with the tire dust. This kept her for so long but soon she was on the floor inspecting the spacing between floor tiles and the way dust scatters when she puffs her breath at it.

 How much time had gone by? It felt like hours. That's time in a waiting room with a toddler. Next, Emma was standing beside a stack of tires that made a vertical tunnel nearly as tall as she is, patting on the side and telling me she wants to go in there. At first I told her we shouldn't play with that, but then I recognized the reality of that waiting room and the estimated wait time given that we had definitely passed and- hey, what wouldn it hurt. I would let her test out the tunnel and worst thing that could happen was the management asks me to stop, refrain, behave. Scooped Emma under the arms and plopped her down into the tunnel. And of course she loved it! This may have been our saving grace in the last few minutes of the tire change, which was drawn out due to problematic lug nuts.

Here she is! And I'm happy to announce that management had nothing to say against it, but they we're probably thanking me under their breath for keeping my two-year-old content through that long visit. I said Yes, and it brought some happiness. 

 But now I'm going to shift this story a little. After watching Emma bob up and down in the tire stack for a while with me holding the tires steady, focused on her, focused on that moment, I happened to notice the lettering on the side of the tire. EMMA.

That's what it said, her name. She was down in a stack of tires with her name on it. Right after noticing this a man from the shop came in and said he needed to take that tire to the shop for a car- he even apologized for interrupting. 

How many tire shops could be chosen by any person, with a child of any name, and any tendency toward or away from that sort of play, with enough freedom and encouragement from their parent to do something a little out of the ordinary? 

Sometimes, something gives a nod in your direction. I think if we shed the distractions, the bustle, the worry, the overthinking and planning and all the white noise... We open ourselves up to new opportunities, lessons, definitely- and maybe even to a sense that we are on the right track or just where we are supposed to be.

Here.

Now.

That's what I'm feeling lately. To tie this all into my life with an always growing Emma, the reason for this whole blog/diary keeping, I know that she is supposed to be here and that I am supposed to be here with her. She brings me back to Now again and again. And I'm making a conscious effort to take out everything that would keep me from the one thing that really matters: this moment. Not because I want this to bring on something better, but because this is it. 

Happiness is not the destination but the journey.