Life is Hard, But We Can Still Delight in the Mundane and the Sweet
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Yesterday my third grader spent a very long time telling me about a book at school called Warriors, a story about rogue gangs of kittens who fight. It took a very long time with lots of ums and uhhhs, then lots of starting over completely.
Our upstairs toilet is broken. There’s a crack in the top of the bowl that sends a tiny spray of water over the side when we flush. But now, somehow, the handle has broken off too and we haven’t fixed it for weeks. Instead, we remove the lid and hand-lift the lever each time, watching the little red flipper that covers the hole in the bottom and noting how that tiny spray of water shoots out from the cracked porcelain and splashes onto the floor.
Plus, my house is covered in stray socks. And cups and towels and dishes and papers and those expensive Ticonderosa pencils from the required school supply list.
Oh, and the laundry. Oof. That’s all I’m going to say about that.
Our kitty, Tillie, the world’s sweetest cat, pees on anything we leave on the floor in the bathroom. It began with wet towels, but now she’s moved on to anything strewn about on the bathroom floor. She especially loves smelly boys’ gym shorts which is unfortunate because almost every day (or multiple times a day) smelly boy shorts are left on the bathroom floor.
I weighed myself this morning before taking even a tiny sip of water. I emptied my bladder and removed every article of clothing and took in a giant gulp of air before stepping on the scale hoping to float. But somehow, despite several days of eating well and exercising, I weigh more this morning than I have ever weighed in my life. I can barely breathe in these jeans. High school girls wear ‘mom jeans’ ironically and pair them with midriffs. I wear mine with a sweatshirt and sneakers, and there isn’t an ironic thing about it since I am a 43-year-old mom of five in jeans. My mom jeans! Anne Lamott once wrote something about ‘the fanny pack of menopause’ and I can see it forming when I turn sideways in the full-length mirror. It’s on its way.
And right now, deodorant costs $7 per stick. Our family uses approximately 512 sticks per month so I’m feeling guilty (again) for not having an income. We can barely afford to keep our children from smelling up the room. How can we afford to send them to college?
Still, I make the Rabies shot appointment for our cat. I remember to buy water softener salt. I wash and dry and (occasionally) fold our endless mounds of laundry. I think about dinner and soccer practices and ACT exams. And I pick up dog poop before a big snow so the kids can play in the backyard.
It definitely isn’t glamorous, and I will probably spend the entirety of most days wondering if I am doing anything right. Nonetheless, I am delighted by my life.
I am delighted by waking sleepy children and making school lunches and kissing the tops of heads before they head out the door. (This very morning when the garage door closed and the house fell silent, I paused at the kitchen table to stare at an abandoned game of Kings Corner and Lizzy’s drawings strewn haphazardly next to a Piggy and Gerald book, and this wide smile spread across my face because…THIS IS MY LIFE!)
I am delighted by the click-y sound of the keys at my computer (and these reading glasses) and the sun streaming in through the front window, lighting up my cheeks as my stories splay out across the screen.
I am delighted by near-daily phone conversations with my friend Jenny when we complain for an hour about every tiny reality of our existence and the world.
I am delighted by music streaming over Alexa. By the smell of banana muffins baking in the kitchen. By soft kitty fur and delicious food and the people I love and walks near my house and kids’ basketball games and endless books…all of it mixing up and adding together into my one precious, beautiful life.
This is my life. Mine!! And it’s messy and beautiful and boring and hard and wonderful and sweet.
We are allowed to enjoy the beautiful and the hard.
We are allowed to delight in the mundane and the sweet.
I’d love to share my new book with you! Everything I Wish I Could Tell You: A Woman’s Guide to Health in the Body You Actually Have
