Perfect days include things like waking up to the smell of pancakes, going for a run in the cold November sunshine, watching my daughter do some really impressive handstands at her gymnastics class (and squeezing in a little reading during that hour as well; I just started The Lowland, by Jhumpa Lahiri), eating a perfect grilled cheese (my husband makes those!), buying a new bookshelf at IKEA, listening to my son inquire about “going to ‘Kea,” eating pizza at Piecora’s, exchanging text messages with my dad in which I pretend to know something about sports and he totally calls my bluff but seems to enjoy my effort, browsing at the Elliott Bay Book Company and crawling into the little castle there with my son where we read a Batman book together, and getting the kids to bed at a reasonable hour so Matt and I can watch Mad Men and eat chocolate.
At the end of my life, I want to remember totally ordinary days like this, and how happy they made me. I’ve read that “Top 5 Regrets” article once or twice now, the one people keep posting on Facebook -- the “deathbed confessions” people make to nurses or whatever -- and of course it was totally predictable; people wished they’d worked less and spent more time with their families and spoken their mind and been true to themselves. I didn’t read that list and feel like I was missing something important, probably because I speak my mind too damn much already, but there was one really simple thing like, “I wish I’d let myself be happy.” Sometimes I think the simplest way to do that is to just stay present in my life, which is perhaps why I write all these blog entries about very ordinary things. I also find myself much less concerned with what other people have (as opposed to what I have) or with what I think I’m supposed to want that I don’t have. That sounds so trite, and so obvious, but clearly this weighs on people.
Anyway, I did not actually buy any books this afternoon. I feel this should be noted, because it’s a rare thing for me to wander around my favorite bookstore without buying something, but I have a solid handful of really great books to read right at this moment, and I anticipate going back soon anyway -- it’s my favorite destination for a mental health day, and I think I might need one of those soon. This was a strange, emotionally draining week at school, and when I found myself losing my mind on Thursday afternoon one of the friends who knows me best gently suggested that I take a day off soon. Thing is, I’m not really trained for mental health days anymore, since I use those days to stay home with my children when they pop a fever or have horrible coughs and ear infections. But I realized that it is the end of November and I haven’t had to stay home with them yet this year -- a first. I mean, I haven’t made it to the end of November ever since I’ve had kids, and in the two years before that I was working on my master’s degree and taking classes on weekends, so I took a Monday off every month or two...anyway, the point is, I think I need a day off soon.
Of course what will probably happen is that I’ll take a day to clear my head and the kids will promptly come down with The Crud. (Then again, if that happens, I’ll feel more equipped to handle it with patience and grace.) But even those times bring with them a healthy dose of perspective; after talking with a friend about her sick child this week, I realized that the things that were weighing so heavily on me this week will ultimately take care of themselves, one way or another, and even if it doesn’t happen the way I want, I will still be left with days like this: pancakes, November sunshine, my daughter’s beautiful and fierce energy as she learns to trust her body in a handstand, my son’s requests to do puzzles or read Batman books with him, and these moments of watching my husband put together a bookshelf for me on a Saturday night.
And tomorrow I’m going to add the rest of our Christmas decorations to all that. Not the tree yet, of course, but the other things, and the Christmas music. I’m almost ready for my annual viewing (or three) of Pieces of April, which is the perfect Thanksgiving movie and one of my favorite movies, period, and once I’ve seen that a few times it’s about time for Love Actually. Matt might even grumble a bit tomorrow, because he believes no sign of Christmas should show its face until the day after Thanksgiving (and he’d probably prefer the second week in December, the big Scrooge). But he will humor me anyway and get down the bins I couldn’t reach myself on Tuesday when I came home from school feeling a little sad (though I did set up my Dickens Village houses; those I could reach), and maybe he’ll just be thankful that he didn’t come home to all the Christmas decorations in the living room on November 2, which is when I’m ready to put them up. Some arguments we’ll have every year of our marriage, and I hope we have this one about eighty times.
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