Everything I Know About Life I Learned From My Toddler's Scraps

C was feeding Tricky his dinner tonight, a delightful pasta and leftover soup combination with grated cheese.

Tricky likes his dinner both as fingerfood and on (several) spoons, variety of serving being the spice of life. (Similarly water must be available in waterbottle, sippy cup and Big Boy Cup.)

Everything was going very nicely until a piece of pasta slithered off one of the many spoons and ended up on the floor.

Tricky instantly twisted about trying to spot the lost morsel. Pasta! He called mournfully as if attempting to attract a mongrel dog. Pasta! Eventually C got fed up with all the pasta grief. It’s gone, I heard him say finally, can you just let it go? The Pasta is Gone.

How many times, I thought, have I had to say this very thing and using that very same tone to myself over the years?

The job I failed to get.
The play that never found a producer.
The boy I never kissed.
The boy I did kiss but deeply regretted it.
The tests on our reproductive organs we chose not to have earlier.
The transfer that didn't.

These are the limp fusilli* of our life and once dropped, they must not be fussed over, they must be Let Go.

(And either be eaten by the dog or perhaps turn up on the bottom of your toddler’s sandal next morning.)

*Or perhaps spaghetti. I think that boy I shouldn’t have kissed was definitely a rigatoni.