Compliments from Strangers

Today was fairly nice out, weather wise. My kids have been fighting some nasty cold, cough thing for a couple days, but we decided to go out while it was warm and ride bikes for a bit. Side note, Olivia is the flippin cutest thing on a tricycle I have ever seen. So we were riding around our parking lot. Well, Olivia riding, me carrying Abigail trying to keep up and give Olivia a push whenever she gets stuck. We took a few minutes to look at some dead worms on the ground. Collected some berries that had fallen from a tree. Looked at the flowers blooming. All of a sudden a voice came from a window - "You are so good with your girls." It startled me. I looked up and saw this lady, probably about 80 years old in her kitchen window. She went on, "I always see you out here with them. Playing with them in the snow. Letting them splash in the puddles in the rain. Blowing bubbles. That is wonderful. You are a great mother to those girls. I wish I had spent more time with my children when they were young. I seemed to only care about how clean my floors were. Now that time is gone, and I wish I spent more time with them like that."  I laughed and said I should probably spend a little more time worrying about how clean my floors are. But her eyes were so full of regret  as she told me my kids would never remember how clean my floors were, but they would always remember those times playing outside with me.

I hope she's right. I know I'll always remember these times... and I certainly won't remember all the facebook statuses I read every day, and the emails that seem so important at the moment. Anwyay it was nice to hear, even from, or maybe especially from, a complete random stranger.