Small Failures

I'm waiting this morning for the clock to turn to 9am so I can call the camp office where my daughter is supposed to spend next week, arriving on Sunday. Except I forgot to sign up for the bus, and the bus is full - and the camp is in Texas. She is flying there at the end of the week and staying with a friend - who will get on the bus and go to camp.  My options? Find someone else who didn't sign up in time for the bus and beg for a carpool or drive to Texas, an 18 hour trip.  Or fly in and rent a car to drive her to camp and head home. I'm feeling a bit like a failure this morning.

I also failed to sign her up for tennis camp on time. 

And I failed to notice she was watching Disney shows when she was supposed to be doing her math homework.

I failed my other daughter because I couldn't commit to the used car she wanted, and it sold the day before I decided it was a good deal. I hate shopping cars, especially used cars. We found a hybrid Kia she liked, but I wanted to do a little research before committing. It turns out it was a good deal, but someone else swooped in and got it. 

We had a minor tragedy last weekend because I failed to put the chickens back in the coop one evening when we had friends over for dessert. Unfortunately, I already felt awful because I failed to remember that my friend is gluten free when I made a cherry cobbler, which I overcooked anyway. At least I had fruit from breakfast and whipped cream, and she brought a lovely lemon meringue pie, which was gluten-free and delicious.

While we were visiting, I failed to notice that the chickens were raided by a night creature.  They had flown over the fence, and three of them were in the front yard when our friends left. The fourth we failed to find. But I did find feathers this morning in the neighbor's yard. The cycle of life in action. 

Despite those failures, I fell asleep quickly last night, but I woke up at 3 am and failed to go back to sleep. I finally went downstairs for a melatonin and read for awhile, but it was a book about Wendell Berry, which always makes me feel unrooted. I love his vision for community and caring for place, but it does stir up a longing for land and a reminder that I have failed to enact his ideas.

I also failed to submit an abstract for a paper about this book before the deadline for a conference that I really wanted to attend, but I simply forgot - May and June I was focused on other things. And I probably would have failed to finish it anyway because I failed to say no to some new commitments and have a busy fall.

I lay awake at 3 am, worrying about all the kids, about our parents, thinking about ways I have failed as a mother, a daughter, a wife, a teacher, and a friend - so many! I could go with this list of failures. I felt like Judith Viorst's Alexander on his no good, very bad day.  

It was only when I jerked myself back to thinking about the good things in our life that I could finally fall back to sleep. I may have many failures and shortcomings, but by grace, we do have many blessings. It is easy to get bogged down in the regrets and mistakes and forget how fortunate we are, how wonderful it is to be alive, despite these failings, which I write down here as an act of expiation in atonement for my self-pity. Sometimes it is easier to feel sorry for one's self than to feel grateful. This morning I am grateful for some rain, for the repairmen who fixed our a/c, for my garden, for the remaining chicks, for the new friends we have made, and the old friends who remain so dear, for our meaningful work, for the beauty around us, for our parish and community, and for the health and well being of my family and my loving husband and for the Giver of all these good things and more.  

Several friends and acquaintances have suffered some really tragic losses this week, which make my failures seem the petty things they are.  Life is a gift. 

(**PS: I started this the other morning. And today I found out LK got a seat on the bus after all. Amen.)