Defining Moments

Today as I washed dishes, I watched out the window as two horses frolicked in the spring snow. Yes, frolicked. They jumped and batted and played with each other like dogs do, only much more gracefully and the snow was lightly falling around them. There was a time when I would have imagined that scene, not just the horses, but me pregnant with a baby playing happily on the floor and thought my life was perfect.

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I don't know what we were talking about. I think I was telling my mom about a friend who is always posting on Facebook and telling me in emails about her hobbies, school, etc. This friend is almost as pregnant as I am and her daughter is about six weeks older than Rayne. Sometimes I feel like maybe I am doing something wrong when people can do these things and I can't even manage to get my hair done. But as I talked, something clicked. More than just a feeling, I felt something, a knowing perhaps, inside that I don't really care. I AM doing things the way I want to do them and the way I think they should be done. Imagine that.

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For one reason or another, I spent a minute on Facebook the other day. It started that I was looking to see if any news had been posted about someone I care about. One thing led to another and I looked at an old friend's page. I've known this friend since junior high school and she had a baby right after high school graduation. Don't do the math, but her daughter is now 16 years old. I haven't seen this friend for a long time, but it's been since Rayne was born. I haven't seen the daughter in even longer and remember her as this cute, spunky kid that frankly I worried would be driven to rebellion by her mother. I saw a picture of the daughter and I couldn't even recognize her. I wondered and worried how she is doing.
Something caught my attention so I also looked through this friend's friend list. There were a lot of people that I knew, or at least knew of, in high school, some even dating back to elementary school. I don't really know what I learned from this but something happened. I felt light and like laughing. These weren't the kids I knew or was too intimidated to know. These were just people, grown up people. Not impressive people. People I wouldn't notice, let alone recognize if I saw them on the street. Perhaps by seeing them, I could let go of my high school self and realize that I'm just living my life, just like all of them. Nobody is looking? I thought I'd let go of high school a long time ago, but it was almost as if I was freed of thinking that life is about living in such a way you can go to your high school reunion and present the finished version of yourself.