These are the days of miracle and wonder.
These are also the days when my 9-year-old tells me I'm embarrassing her ("just a little bit, Mummy") when I take her to school in my Juicy sweatpants. Does she not realize that these are my daytime sweatpants? (I actually change out of pajama pants into the Juicys in the morning. Just ask my husband, who mocks me every single time I do it.)
These are the days when the true friends are the ones you can call up and ask for help with pick-up or drop-off, or if it's okay if a child comes over to their house for a couple of hours.
These are the days when you start having to have medical tests that are sort of scary. So you text your friends from the waiting room, trying for lightness, when really you're just terrified.
These are the days of Words With Friends, The Hunger Games, Downton Abbey, US Weekly and Mary Oliver.
These are the days when an evening may include quizzing someone on the multiplication tables (1-12) for 15 minutes, washing someone's back in a tub overflowing with bubbles, a black tie cocktail party, Gossip Girl or too many glasses of wine at the local dive bar. Or all of the above.
These are the days when some friends are doing cleanses and others are subsisting on white wine and peppermint patties and you oscillate wildly between those two poles.
These are the days when you know who you truly love and why. You know who your genuinely close friends are.
These are the days when a cancer diagnosis in someone you know is no longer shockingly rare, but becoming instead horrifyingly par for the course.
These are the days when, on your birthday, the children of your old friends call to sing you happy birthday. You can hear the voice of your friend, their mother (and the person who, for years, was the one doing the singing) in the background.
These are the days of rushing home and taking off your heels -- the good pair that you finally bought -- and your dress pants and jewelry and pulling on your pajamas to read to your children and tuck them in.
These are the days when most of the time you feel 18, but once in a while you feel excruciatingly aware of every single hour you've lived.
These are the days of SUVs and minivans, of extra boosters floating around the trunk in case you need to put up the 3rd row, of kids who tell you what radio station to put on and who sing along, knowing every word to Katy Perry and Taylor Swift and Gym Class Heroes.
These are the days when you cry all the time, often because you feel like your heart is going to burst from the fullness of a single day.
These are the days of miracle and wonder, indeed.
Follow Lindsey Mead on Twitter: www.twitter.com/lemead
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