Someone took our order last week and I noticed his bracelet. Bead letters, the kind that come out of a craft project. It read IT’S A GREAT DAY.
It sent me back to my divorce.
I was a stay-at-home mom then, and suddenly splitting time with our girls was excruciating. The house was too quiet, and loneliness dug deep deep in my soul. The quiet could hear my heartbreak.
I talked a lot with my friend Lisa during that time. One day she said something that rearranged me.
“Pretend you were choosing to be alone.” If you had planned a day to yourself, what would you do?
So I pretended. Finances were tight, so it was a coffee. A long walk. A conversation with a friend. Maybe a nap. Once I bought a frozen key lime pie at the grocery store because it sounded decadent.
Not every one of those days worked. I dipped and soared between hopeful and heart attack.
It was in the quiet that I had to ask what I actually liked. I’m a first-born helper. There was no one else to feed or care for, so I was forced to get clear on me.
That’s the part I didn’t understand at the time. I thought Lisa was teaching me how to survive the quiet. She was teaching me what I’d choose. You can’t choose your days until you know that.
Now I think about it almost every day. There are constraints, obviously, work and obligation and other people’s needs. But I have more agency over my hours than I tend to admit.
I keep coming back to the fact that his mom made that bracelet for him. She put his day in front of him to choose. I made mine out of a frozen pie.