Friday

This morning I got up before the sun and headed to Denver for a benefit breakfast I had been invited to by a new friend from my soccer team. I didn't feel intimidated when she casually mentioned her nonprofit. But, um, by "her" she really meant "Her"-like as in, "I am the Executive Director". I'm sitting at the table, appropriately dressed in business casual, nibbling on my bagel and lox with a side of green capers (which I am thinking looks suspiciously like something my rabbit would have left behind although, much tastier) and fortifying myself with a cup of coffee AND tea. The lawyers surrounding me at the table make friendly small talk and offer validation of the "hard work" of my role as a stay at home mom in the way that only working professionals who have careers and not kids can. (yep, if anybody at the table throws up or needs to use the bathroom, I'm your girl.--thought, not spoken.) The benefit was for an organization called Seeking Common Ground and the idea is to bridge the gaps that religion, social status, and history, etc would dictate for our path. My legs dangling above the ground in the adult sized chair, I listened to eager voices of change and friendships between white and black South Africans, Jew and Muslim, Israeli and Palestinian-neighbors except for a wall. The thoughts and actions of people inspired to make a difference and "use the brick they had been given to make a step instead of a stumbling block". I was thinking over the meeting as I was driving home to do the laundry and chaperone on a 1st grade field trip. I thought maybe I was the only one going home who had the urge to shout "slugbug" and hit the ceiling everytime I saw a VW Beetle thanks to the usual cacophony from the backseat. And as I arrived home to a locked door and had to shimmy under the garage door while climbing over boxes, I imagined the lawyers at the table with me, sneaking peaks at their cell phones under the white tablecloth, doing the same. The image didn't fit. But for a moment, an hour and a half, we shared something more than a table and the cream cheese. We shared some common ground. And had the same thought planted that an ordinary person could make a difference. My ordinary seemed extra ordinary compared to the PHD's and awards around me. But maybe, there is a chance for this laundry-doing, meal-making, bathroom-cleaning Momma to take her very ordinariness and make a difference as well.