Zen and Turtles

"Mama, we should have given the goldfish to someone who didn't have turtles..."

As I lay in bed this morning, consoling my seven year old middle child, traumatized after witnessing the 'Circle of Life' , I finally got it.

My husband, stupidly, decided to add left over goldfish from a booth at the school carnival where our family volunteered last night to the tank in Cory's room, where we keep our pet turtles.

" The fish was alive. I was having a perfectly good conversation with it, and the turtle just swam up and ate it, Mama, right while I was talking to it."

There was something about that moment, hiding under the covers, snuggling and crying along with him, in which I finally remembered that I could stop searching for my "real" life. What I Will Be When I Grow Up. The Important Thing to Change The World.

My life's purpose, delivered to me in an aquarium sitting on the beat up old dresser in my kid's room. I finally had my moment of clarity after 10 years of marriage, three birth children, raising my younger brother, numerous puppies and kittens, endless mornings spent eating pancakes with neighborhood children, self help books, therapy, Hipmama blogging, starting smoking, quitting smoking, breast feeding, bottle feeding, natural child birth, Cesarean section, working two jobs, being a stay at home mama, being a vegetarian, going on the Atkins diet, becoming a vegetarian again, earning two college degrees, hours of internet research, Chai Tea, tub soaking, questioning Jesus, questioning Buddha, cutting my hair, growing my hair out, and finding all my high school friends and enemies on Classmates....

It took a seven year old, two turtles and a goldfish to make me rembember what is important in life.

Mothering is often that way for me.

I remember that I am beautiful as I see my reflection in stainless steel. My hair curls tightly around my face from the steam when I lift the lid off a pot of home made soup. I stir it on the stove with one hand, while reading my several times dog-eared copy of Khalil Gibran's poems, propped against the paper towel holder next to the stove.

I realize that I am smart and funny when I quote Shel Silverstein from Memory as my 10 year old refuses to take the garbage out (Remember Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout?).

I know that four years of Political Science studies have not gone to waste when my elementary school children explain to my mother in law why we won't shop at some stores, or why soy chix nuggets are better for you than McDonalds.

I am something more than an angry black woman or a neurotic, too young mother, who flushed her life down the toilet, in the moment that I realize what a beautiful thing it is that I have raised a kid who talks to the goldfish.

***I am interested to know what mama- moments make you mamas feel beautiful/smart/funny/sexy/cool? What are the moments that make you "get it"?