I have been putting band-aids on boo-boos for about a million years! I am one of six kids, I babysat starting at 12, I worked as a nanny for a number of years, and I have been a parent for almost 20 years. . . I have used like 10,000 band aids in my life and I have a favorite--it's my go to in most situations! It's this lovely butterfly shaped bandage. Does it work for the ripped apart knee? Well, no, not always. . . but sometimes. But it does work for all the curving, small, weird shaped body parts of small humans and not-so-small humans. It works on the toes and the heals, on the fingers and hands. . . but it is not limited. You stick that thing on your big beefy straight leg and it still does the trick!
Well, somehow in the world of Covid and shortages and life being weird, this bandage doesn't exist in the first aid sections of my local stores any more. . .it's not even like an empty slot has been left for the return of the magically shaped bandages. Looking at the shelves, there is no space set aside for when it's back in stock. There's no evidence that it even existed.
And I know this weird bandage love is WEIRD, but I am pretty sure it is human. Maybe there was a snack that you loved or a cut of a shirt or a favorite pair of jeans or something and it was the perfect one and now it's no more. Your heart breaks a little when you think about it.
But isn't that how life is sometimes. You had the right thing, the perfect thing, the one you would always go for and then one day you didn't have it anymore.
Yet, we go on. . . I haven't stopped putting bandages on boo-boos, you probably have kept wearing cloths even if your favorite jeans aren't available.
I think a lot of things in life are like this: we have had a "perfect" solution to a situation or a "go-to" preference. Maybe in the moment we knew we loved it, maybe in the moment we just took it for granted; yet the absence has been felt once it was gone.
And it's tricky! So what do you do with the band-aid situations in your life? I think for me it's about the appreciation in the moment, but also knowing that those preferred items aren't the only ones that might be "right" in the world. It's one of the AND situations in my life. I will keep using band-aids and taking care of the cuts and scratches that are inevitable in my world AND I will keep magically butterfly band-aids on my shopping list.