I’ll be candid. This week was R.O.U.G.H. Work kicked my tail. Parenting was hard. Family members are struggling with health issues. I felt like I was getting hit from every side most days, and yet, even in the midst of this rough patch, there were bright spots that balanced out the negative parts.
One evening, as we were leaving our golf lesson, I got an email from Shipt letting me know that my delivery would be at my house between 7-10pm that evening. I was momentarily confused because the order was for the Apple Watch I had been looking at online earlier in the week, and I thought somehow I had purchased it by accident. (Bless my naïve heart…) Then, my heart sank when I saw the next email telling me that I had added a new shipment address to my account…in Michigan.
I had been hacked – to the tune of hundreds of dollars.
Immediately, I called the customer service number to tell them what happened. Thankfully, they were already on top of the situation. Their super smart fraud department noticed the strange activity and had cancelled the order and locked my account. Marshall, the customer service representative that got my panicked and discombobulated call, was patient and kind, and walked me through the process of getting the fraudulent charges off of my account and resetting everything back to normal. I thanked him profusely and then, he asked if I would hold while he confirmed I was all set.
When he came back from confirming my account was cleared, Marshall said, “Can I just say something? I am really excited to talk to you.” I could tell by his voice that he meant it, but I was confused as to why he would be excited to talk to me. To clarify, he added, “You have the lowest customer number I have ever seen. You must be one of our original customers from when we first started up.”
I started laughing because I absolutely was one of the Shipt’s first customers. When I got wind of a Birmingham-based company that was going to deliver groceries to my house, I darn near stalked the company to find out how to get a membership. I was a new mom at the time, and it was like a dream come true. My customer number was only 3 digits long because I was one of the first 1000 people to sign up – and Marshall was blown away to get to talk to one of the O.G.’s.
So, Marshall and I talked for a few minutes. We talked about the weather we were both experiencing, our common love for Garth Brooks, his birthday the day before, and how much he was looking forward to enjoying a bourbon with his girlfriend when he got a chance to do so. He ended the call by telling me that he was giving me a $25 credit on my account just because he could and told me that if I ever needed anything in the future to ask for him by name.
A much needed bright spot in a really yucky day.
Another was after a particularly rough night of trying to get Diana to do her homework. She was easily distracted by basically everything, and it was taking about 5,000 times longer to do a few worksheets than I thought it should.
For the record, appealing to an 8-year-old’s concept of time management with the incentive of getting to do “fun things” or “screen time” falls on deaf ears once she starts to be able to do the math and realize that it will only be for about 5 minutes. In her calculations, it wasn’t worth hustling through homework to get that little of a reward.
I finally decided that good enough was going to have to be good enough. We were both frustrated, and the more frustrated we got, the longer each subsequent part of her homework took. I sent her to take her shower in my bathroom and decided to use the time to FaceTime my sister Jessica to vent. I sat on my bed with the door open to my bathroom, so I could hear if Diana needed anything.
It only took a few minutes before I heard her sweet, small 8-year-old voice call out, “Momma, can you come here? I want to show you something.” I sighed a deep sigh and dragged myself to the bathroom, ready for some whining or a request to help with something that shouldn’t really require help.
“Look what I wrote you, Momma.”
She had written “I’m sorry” in the condensation on the glass shower wall. My heart immediately melted, and I thanked her for her apology and smiled warmly at her through the glass. In my nice momma voice, I asked her to hurry up and finish her shower and started to go back out to my bedroom.
“Momma, I have to show you something else.” I turned to look at her and saw her holding up my pink razor. I froze. “I got curious what this pink thing was, and so, I tried it on my arm. Now, my arm is bald!”
I burst out laughing. Bless her little, one-arm bald heart.
While Diana finished her shower, we talked about how dangerous razors could be, and I told her I was grateful that she hadn’t cut herself. (It was hard to be serious when she kept staring at her bald arm in amazement.) She peppered me with questions about what happens to hair when it grows back, how razors are made, what happens if you cut yourself and how she was going to hide her baldness from her classmates. I gladly answered them as I dried and brushed her hair, and we hugged before she went to finish the rest of her bedtime routine.
Another much needed bright spot.
No day is all good or all bad. This week was a powerful reminder of that, again and again. When I was at my wit’s end with parenting drama, I would have a sweet moment like the one above. When I was scared and frustrated that someone hacked me, I had a lovely interaction with a super helpful customer service representative. When I was struggling with work or parenting, I had friends or colleagues that offered support and wise counsel. When I was starting to feel a little isolated, I got an invite to a girls’ dinner that turned out to be the best night of the week. As always, when I look for the good, I can find it and when I focus on the positive, it grows.
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