Tonight is the night before Thanksgiving and we have a tradition of going to see the balloons being blown up for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Several large city blocks are closed down and thousands of adults and children crowd the streets for the chance to stroll by and see “Hello Kitty”, “Scooby Doo”, “Snoopy” and the rest of the gang get blown into life. Giant balloon prep takes hours and it is usually a festive way to kick off the holidays. Usually.

Due to the unseasonably mild weather, a record number of people turned out for the balloon blowing tonight. Millions of us jammed the street, funnelled by barricades, the police, and the momentum of the crowd onto the closed off sidewalks to view the waiting floats. It was the sort of scene which casts NYC in a scary and negative light—too many frustrated people in the same small space jostling and getting jostled for position. However, in the midst of this mayhem I had a rather large “lightbulb moment” when I heard a short exchange between a woman and a police officer. In response to this woman shouting “This is horrible! Awful! Miserable!”, a police officer calmly responded, “Nobody said you had to be here, ma’am”. That shut her up and turned a lot of heads as that wisdom sank in. We were all choosing to be there…

The balloon scene was definitely out of my control (and everyone else’s)–but I chose to be there with my children and I chose to shift my perspective, be somewhat flexible and laugh at the ridiculousness of the situation. I called upon the Mommy Trifecta. My children were not actually in danger despite the size of the crowd and we were able to seek repreive inside my in-laws lovely apartment. It was not awful that my daughter kept asking “do we have to be here? do we have to do this?”, it just stang because it took some considerable effort on my part to make that child unfriendly experience go down.

I need to remember this notion of choice and perspective as I head into Thanksgiving and back to work…Diane