My Favorite Part

 

“Mommy, will you play with me?”

My doe eyed daughter looks up at me as I frantically wash dishes in the sink. We are running late. We are always running late.

She grabs my shirt, imploring me to sit with her. So I turn off the water and sink down to the hardwood floor.

“Look at the glitter on Elsa’s dress!” she points out enthusiastically, as she holds up the small plastic doll. I notice the way the blue skirt shimmers in the soft light of the kitchen. It looks magical.

I think about all of the things I wanted to do this afternoon: get money from the bank, buy a toy for a birthday party and go to the playground. Then I look down at my two-year-old daughter, who is completely engrossed in her game of pretend. She lines up all of her figurines and tells me that they are having a big party.

“Do you want to come to the party Mommy?” she asks.

“Of course I do. It looks like a fun party,” I answer. Within a few minutes, she is deeply engrossed in party planning. She handles the figurines with care, and makes sure that each of them has a place to sit up.

“Do you just want to stay home and play?” I ask, even though I already know the answer. She nods.

We spend the rest of the afternoon in our sunny playroom creating Lego towers and decorating a shoebox “dollhouse.” My daughter creates play-doh dresses for her dolls and fills construction paper with stickers. She is content with our afternoon and I know that I should be too.

We are fortunate to live in a town where there is a lot for kids to do, but sometimes it’s the smallest things that make my daughter happy: a shoebox, a pink ball, french fries, hugs, a slide, bubbles, a dance party. She reminds me to pay attention to these seemingly everyday moments in our lives.

At bedtime that night, we talked about our day.

“What was your favorite part?” I ask, expecting her to talk about her soccer class and going out to lunch with her friend afterwards.

“Playing with Mommy,” she answers, before launching into a description of all of the toys we played with together.

“That was my favorite part too,” I tell her.

And it was.