On staying in love

“When I reread my notebooks it never fails to remind me that I have a life, that I felt and thought and saw. It is very reaffirming, because sometimes writing seems useless and a waste of time. Suddenly you are sitting in your chair fascinated by your own mundane life. That’s the great value of art -- making the ordinary extraordinary. We awaken ourselves to the life we are living.” -- Natalie Goldberg

I turned 35 on Wednesday. My children seem to have reached that magical age in which they’ve built up their immune systems after catching all the colds, the ear infections, the viruses, the sinus infections, and the fevers, and since I haven’t had to take days off work to stay home with them this year, I decided to take the day off just for me. I was home last year on my thirty-fourth birthday, but I was taking care of a sick child and wallowing in my own self pity. I remember wandering around the house in sweats, feeling down about having to cancel the modest birthday plans I’d made, and berating myself for not using my “day off” to at least get some papers graded or finish reading a novel. This year, I decided to take advantage of my good fortune and spend the day doing everything I love best.

Before I could do any of that, though, my daughter surprised me with breakfast, a plan she’d concocted the night before. During dinner she suddenly said, “Dad, I need to talk to you. Over there.” And she hustled him into the study. When they returned to the table, I said, “So what’d you guys talk about?”

“Nothing,” Zannah said before turning to her father. “DAD. Don’t tell her.” When I climbed out of bed in the morning Matt and Suzannah were in the kitchen, cracking an egg over a pan. Oh, this is why you have children. Nothing tastes better than a gloppy fried egg with a broken yolk atop a grilled veggie sausage when your daughter has prepared it for you.

After I dropped off the kids, I headed down to Tacoma where I happened to bump into one of my best friends at a local coffee shop. What do you know -- she'd taken the day off school, too! What a spectacular coincidence! So we had coffee, and I worked on revising a poem I drafted during a recent writing workshop while she graded papers. She took me to lunch at a sweet little cafe, where we shared warmed brie with a baguette as an appetizer and I had a glass of wine, of all things, even though it was barely noon and a Wednesday. We walked around in the sunshine for awhile afterwards -- the sunshine! The sunshine! -- and then I drove home again, where I had just enough time to go for a run (in short sleeves!) before I met Suzannah at her classroom door.

While I ran I thought about how I remembered my own mother when she was the age I am now -- I’d have been right around Suzannah’s age. And I realized I am nowhere near as wise, gracious, and mature as my own mother was in her mid-thirties. She scoffed at that when I confessed it on the phone that night, but I can’t really see my mother showing up at my classroom door, panting and sweaty, ponytail sticking to her neck, which is exactly how I greeted my daughter. Her teacher chuckled.

“You must have been running,” she said. “It’s a beautiful day.”

Suzannah was horrified. “Mom!” she shrieked from inside the classroom. (She is often the last one out the door, as she likes to walk around and make sure the chairs are straight and everything is in perfect order -- her things and everyone else’s -- before she leaves for the day.)

“Hi, Bug!” I called cheerfully. To which she replied, “You’re all sweaty. Don’t hug me.” Back home, though, she threw her arms around my waist and said, “Oh, fine. It’s fine. I’ll hug you. But don’t kiss me until you take a bath, please.”

I took a bath and read some of Ann Patchett’s latest collection of essays. As soon as I smelled like bubbles and body lotion, we picked up Isaac and headed to Seattle, where we met Matt at the Elliott Bay Book Company -- one of my favorite birthday/Mother’s Day rituals -- and I bought a few things before we all drove to dinner at Veggie Grill, which is hardly fancy but which we all love, and I somehow always leave that place feeling so cozy and content. Not a bad way to end my first day of being thirty-five. (Nor is watching a couple of episodes of Orphan Black before bed while sipping a gin and tonic. Who knew I’d find a drama about clones so compelling?)

I’m not writing all of this because I think it’s fascinating reading or because I want to pass along some profound birthday wisdom. (I tried the profound birthday wisdom when I was about twenty-four and I must have sounded so insufferable.) I’m writing it for the same old reason I write anything here, I suppose, except for the times when I’m ranting or when I’m sad or lonely or confused or heartbroken, because I do that, too. But I also want to do the impossible, which is to hold on to these perfect, ordinary moments. They’ll pass, and I’ll feel stressed and anxious again. I will be a hypochondriac; I will be a martyr. I will snap at my children. I will pick fights with my husband. I will mutter barely under my breath about other people’s messes while I clean them up in a fantastically passive aggressive manner.

But underneath all of that, I will stay in love with the everyday simplicity -- sipping a perfect latte in a warm, sunlit coffee shop. A glass of dry white wine and brie at noon. The first run of the year in short sleeves. My goofy children making weird things out of Wikki Stix in a booth at Veggie Grill. Honestly, I felt just leveled by gratitude all day -- that I get to have this life, with these people. That I get to breathe this sweet air on a sunny afternoon.

I don’t think happiness is an automatic part of the deal when we’re born. I don’t think it’s something we’re owed; certainly it’s not something we’re ever promised. And it seems strange to say, maybe, but I don’t think any of my life goals have anything to do with being happy, or achieving happiness, or however you want to put it. And while of course I want my children to be happy, it’s the same thing -- when I think about my desires for them, I hope more that they lead compassionate, intentional lives in which they serve the world with the gifts they’re given. I don’t necessarily hope they go tromping off in search of happiness. It sure isn’t going to come from the car or the house or the trip or the stuff, or any of the things that we think we're supposed to want. I think it grows right up out of learning to stay present and stay grateful.

(I sincerely hope this isn’t masquerading as profound birthday wisdom. If it is, I am so sorry. Forty-five-year-old me will probably read this and roll her eyes forever.)

I am such a work-in-progress, and I know I can be a colossal pain in the ass in the meantime. I can also be, and often am, decidedly ungrateful and not terribly present. But I’m trying. And that’s why I write it all down -- so I can remember, in those insufferable, ungrateful moments, that my life is filled with grace, and light, and love.