Soap Reflections

I decided the other day that we should use a big bottle of soap that we got as a wedding present.  I love this soap.  It's peppermint, the label is filled with religious propaganda if you really read it, and it makes your skin feel tingly all over.  Mostly, the smell reminds me of many great adventures that I've been on - doing handstands on the banks of the Escalante, getting robbed under the peaceful starlight in remote Copper Canyon Mexico, wading through a river up to my chest with my backpack over my head in the Ozarks, trying to see through the mist in the Olympics, puking my brains out in India, washing out the dinner pot by the Columbia River Gorge during my first date with Dan - to name a few.  I was thinking of these memories as I was all tingly getting ready for work in our very ordinary bathroom.  I was also wondering why I waited so long to use the bottle of pepperminty goodness that I like so much.  It's not like we were just married last year.  I mean, it was given to us, so it wouldn't have broken our ongoing record to never purchase a bar of soap since we've been married (again, not married just last year, and should we feel guilty for having used so many very small, trial-sized hotel soaps?)  If I missed out on all those peppermint mornings in exchange for miniscule bars of soap (some of them admittedly quite nice, thank you husband who sometimes travels in classy places), thinking it had to be saved for something special, then what else am I missing out on?  I think of the talents I'm keeping stagnant at the moment, the trips or excursions I am not taking, the friendships I'm not fostering, the poeple I am not helping, the books I am not reading, etc. 

Most of all, however, I think about whether I am doing everything that I should with my children and whether I fully appreciate them.  I mean, Skye is incredibly funny and clever in a two-year-old way and she can spin to join the whirling dervishes.  She is so smart and used the word "actually" the other day after saying, "bless my soul" and her ABC's.  This was preceded, however, by drinking the colored bath water, hitting her sister for no apparent reason, and eating a fruit snack found on the grocery store floor.  Sela is so smart.  We had a conversation the other day that went like this: "Mom, what is the biggest number?"  "There is no biggest number.  You can keep counting higher, and higher and higher forever and never stop counting trying to get to the biggest number."  "Oh, it's kindof like a circle."  "Um, yeah."  Ok, abstract math concepts from a girl who forgets the number 16.  The following day came this conversation:  "Mom, today at school I accidentally got a little pee on my fingers, but don't worry, I washed them off in the toilet." Ok, got that concept too.  Way to go health professional Mom.

When people would ask me if I really wanted to put my life on hold so long to go to medical school and the various other years of educational training that followed, I remember thinking, "Who said I am going to put my life on hold?  I think that I'll keep living all through those years."  I think that I did, too, quite fully.  I just hope that I haven't changed now to a peppermint soap hoarder with unrealized potential in the various aspects of my life.  I need to try harder.  At least now there is the option of minty freshness or "fun size" tiny soap for your bathing pleasure at our house.  Come visit any time.