Addie, my daughter who is 7, has recently become slightly obsessed with fairies and fairy houses.  She builds fairy houses EVERYWHERE.  I no longer have any empty clay pots, warped metal bowls or unused containers of any kind.  They have all congregated under the porch holding various bits of moss, mud, water, acorn shells, sea shells, wood bits and grasses of all kinds.  Because the fairies NEED ponds, moss lawns, leaf boats, wooden shelters, acorn shopping centers, not to mention hospitals and churches.

She insisted yesterday I help her build a fairy land underneath her fort.  She had already cleared the space, all we had to do, was create.

I’ll admit.

I was tempted to tell her I was too busy.  After all, I was in the middle of laundry, dishes, writing, floor cleaning and Christmas wrapping.

But, then I remembered.  THIS is why I chose to home school.  THIS is why I chose to leave full-time employment.  THIS is my life now.  And it won’t be that way for long.  No indeed, this is going to be much shorter than I’d like, though some day’s I feel like throwing in the towel.  So I left the laundry.  And the dishes.  And the writing.  And the floors.  And the gifts.

And I helped build a fairy land.

It didn’t take long, but when I used an acorn cap for a roof on my fairy building and Addie declared, “Why, how clever of you!”  I knew it was time well spent.  Yes, I was squatting, unceremoniously in my lawn, in my pajamas, mooning the world (by accident), at 10:30 on a Tuesday morning.  But………but I was making memories.  And memories, good ones, are worth more than all the clean laundry in the world.

This.  This is why I do what I do.

And say ‘No’ to many things I’d like to say ‘Yes’ to.

But regrets?  Nope.  Not here.

Someday it might all be about ‘me’ again, but I doubt it. And that, that is A-Okay.

Now, I think I’ll go build another fairy house.
It is winter you know…….