My best friend mama.

It's been a tough week.  I had my final week of grand jury duty, and they've made it a doozy.  Today was a baby raper case that lasted over 4 hours.  Four hours of hearing about a child being hurt in the most horrific ways.  It wasn't all that long ago that I worked in the field.  I was the one going into the rape exams and sitting with the victims (kids and adults) while the rape kits were done.  But it is NOT something that I could do now that I'm a parent.  It's so interesting to me how being a mom reshapes how you view absolutely everything.

I know a person who is all shades of crazy.  She is a flat lunatic and has caused much stress and misery in my life.  And in the past, I could, with good conscience, hate her.  Now my very first gut reaction is that I feel for her family.  She is somebodies mother.  There are children who look at this woman and she is their light.  She may be a disco ball lit by a strobe light reflecting a lava lamp, but she is still their universe. They love her unconditionally, look up to her, and place their hopes and dreams and validation in her crazy ass.  And that is heartbreaking.

There's no shame in being crazy.  Hell, we're all a bit nuts, if you look deep enough.  But as a mom I just hope that I can keep my crazy in check enough to not have it negatively impact my kids too much.

I'm gonna go ahead and leave that in, although it's ended up NOT being the direction that I want this post to go.  We'll just call it a floating observation.

The point I set out intending to make is that my kid, my hilarious and awkward kid, made my week melt away by running over to me with a book and declaring that she was going to read a book to "her best friend mama".   For a moment, I was my kid's best friend.  A brief moment, cause she's 3 and found a reason to hate me shortly after, but that moment existed none the less.  And it served its purpose.  I felt better.  I felt at peace with my small world.  I felt hopeful.

But if she's 13 and still calling me her best friend, we're gonna have issues.  I'm pretty sure I beat kids like that up.