I nearly forgot the packed lunch on the counter

Dear Delyara, I remembered at the front door. That horrible little jolt went through me before I even fully knew why, and then I saw it in my head — the lunchbox sitting there in plain sight on the counter, perfectly packed and completely useless unless someone actually took it to school. I ran back, grabbed it, smiled like nothing had happened, and got everyone out of the house. But inside, I felt shaken. Not because of the lunch itself. Because of what it represented. One more nearly-missed thing. One more moment where I was a second away from letting a child down in a way that would have looked small from outside and felt huge to me. That’s what gets tiring. Not only the doing. The constant possibility of forgetting something that matters.