📿 Focus on the Bananas, Not the Bib

Because there will always be another shoe that will drop

Earlier today I was feeding Ruby a banana. She loves banana. So much so that she will do an anticipatory dance when placed into her high chair. 

Today, however, I placed a bib on her that was not to her liking. The pocket in it is smaller than her other bib. She felt cramped. She would reach in for a fallen piece of banana and, frustrated at the difficulty of getting it out, attempt to yank the whole bib off of her neck.

I turned to her after the third time this happened and pointed to the tray full of other banana slices and said, “Focus on the banana, not the bib.” 

As I imagine will become a growing trend as I parent, I realized that the advice I was offering to her would also be good advice to take myself. 

I have, over the course of this lifetime, been a worrier. I think I came into life with a unique ability to look for what might go wrong. As a kid I worried about what might go wrong at sleepovers and thus avoided them religiously. I worried about what would go wrong when meeting new people and how they wouldn’t like me. I worried about sitting in the wrong spot and saying the wrong thing…and this was all in grade school. I was, to say the least, an anxious child.

I outgrew my social anxiety but there was a period in my late twenties when I was cursed with a bad streak of heartbreak: my best friend died unexpectedly, following a broken engagement to my long-term girlfriend, plus I lost my job and then a few months later my father died. It was a lot. That period left me wondering, in the subsequent years when things were going well, when the other shoe would once again drop.

Thank you to our paid subscribers for all your support. If you would like to continue with this piece, please consider becoming a paid subscriber today.