Pop the bubble

Sometimes I feel like I live in a bubble.  I zip around my town and surrounding towns in my car with my kids, dropping off and picking up, running errands, seeing friends, living life.  Everything is neat in its place.  My feathers don’t get ruffled much.  You get yourself into a tidy routine and then you assume positions.  I like it.  It’s safe and natural.  It’s life.  We all have our routines and we make it work, whether we trek into work by bus, or stay home with your kids, we all fall into our prospective bubbles and places.  And I float around bouncing from one thing to another waving to familiar faces and bursting with protected situations.  Bounce to the gym.  Bounce to school.  Bounce back home.

It’s funny because I recently went to get myself a wax and spoke to the owner of the place.  I walked into a conversation about her discussing her “bubble.”  “I was just thinking about my bubble,” I said.  And I was.  I was thinking about my neat and tidy bubble.  And sometimes it is nice if you pop the damn thing.  There is nothing wrong with being safe in your life and your routine, whatever it is.  But there is something liberating about leaving it for a moment.

A few weeks ago, I went out with some friends on a Friday evening.  We took the train into New York City for a night out.  I used to feel like Penn Stations was a second home but it has felt like years since I’ve been there.  I walked out of the train and couldn’t keep my eyes still.  OVERSTIMULATED! 

Look there!  Do you see that?  Is he asleep?  Should we give him money?

It’s like I was 12 years old or something.  I didn’t’ have enough eyes to see everything around me. 

I got so used to my little bubble that I was struck hard by my surroundings, especially the man doing gymnastics through Penn Stations. “Watch him,” I whispered to my friend sipping our roadies in brown paper bags.  I watched the men and women in their suits and business attire breezing by living a different life from mine.  I saw a couple kissing in a corner, a mom carting her baby in backpack; I saw it and I liked the view. It was so fun to step outside and experience something other than filling sippy cups and making sure I have enough diapers in the house.  We went to a beautiful rooftop bar and clicked our martini glasses in solidarity.  Moms are out in our high heeled shoes.  Click, clank, click clank.  The little 20 something’s need to watch out for us because when we go, we go hard.  We drank, we danced, and we stumbled home.  We stepped out of our routine and away from our bubble for a night, for a change in scenery.  We had fun.  And then we went home, woke up to our children, and assumed our positions.  But somehow, my life felt even more pleasant after a moment away.  It gave me a little more perspective.  Yes, I can be a mom but I can also be me.  Yes I can be serious and teach lessons, but I can also yell at the DJ for not playing MY SONG!

We might be married and have children, but we also have lives to live outside that bubble.  We have been stretched out physically and stretched thin mentally.  Perhaps some of us have stretch marks under our spaghetti strapped tops to prove it but it only tells us that we have truly experienced life.  We have been there, where they are.  We have done it.  We have survived through it and ended up where all those young kids want to end up, like us, with children.  Well, most of them anyway.  There is nothing more beautiful and over stimulating than that.

In the end, I nursed a hangover for 8 days which turned into a very bad cold on day 9.  But, I did it with a smile on my face; happy to have popped that bubble and stepped out of it, if only for one night.