My girls have a show they love to watch, a craft show, where the presenter creates amazing things out of random household products. He slowly crafts and creates, and a cereal box transforms to a recognisable blob. But at the end, he says “now let’s add the details”. And that is when this cereal box becomes an amazing creation.
My girls love that. You hear them when they are crafting and creating themselves, “I’m going to add the details”. And it makes me think about how important the details are.
Take cooking for example: A banana split is just banana and ice-cream without the details of the sauce and nuts. A pavlova is just a big meringue without the details of the cream and fruit.
In this season of motherhood, the details sometimes get lost. And sometimes I don’t present the picture with the extra touches, and they can just look like a blurry blob. Sometimes Mr comes home and asks how the girls have been and I sum it up with “dreadful” or “good”.
But that doesn’t tell him the details of the day, it doesn’t tell him that in the midst of my daughter’s meltdown she found comfort in my arms, spending her tears and expelling her frustration. It doesn’t tell him that for five minutes the girls giggled and laughed and chased butterflies in the garden. It doesn’t tell him that there was a precious moment where I watched my eldest read to her little sister, sharing her growing confidence in her newly acquired skill.
The details make all the difference, the details make a blob a creation, they make a meringue a famous dessert, they make my day more than just a one word answer. And I am reminding myself that I need to focus on the details more and more.
Jodie
That’s a real challenge for me too Jo. I very easily write off a day as tiring or overwhelming if things go pear shaped at the end of the day – yet we may have shared many beautiful moments that I’ve forgotten about. X