Next

Next

It’s the second day of January.  The carpet is still full of fallen pine needles, a straggler Christmas card just arrived in the mail, and the Christmas clearance section at Target is best described as “there appears to have been a struggle.”   Two aisles over, cascades of pink and red hearts festoon the shelves.  Valentine’s Day is 6 weeks away, yet the decor screams, “Let’s MOVE, people!”

2016 has barely begun and I’m already feeling the push of what’s next, hearing the faint scritch, scritch of anxiety scratching to be let in.  Not this year.  The 40’s have been described as the rush hour of life.  We are busy with careers, tugged between growing children and aging parents, spread thin trying to maintain marriages, friendships, and waistlines.  We run the treadmill, literally and figuratively, dealing with life in broad shallow strokes with little time to stop and dive deep.

My word for this year is savor.   On Christmas morning, my sister’s family wakes gradually, enjoys a nice breakfast, and then opens presents one by one throughout the day.  It’s not unusual for me to call late in the afternoon to wish them a Merry Christmas, asking if the kids liked what we sent.  “Oh, we haven’t gotten to them yet!” she’ll say.  “It’s not even dinner time!”  I’m incredulous.  At my house, we wake early, pillage the stockings, and whip through the bounty like Tasmanian devils.  We are usually napping again shortly after lunch from the exhaustion of it all.   This year, we reined in the frenzy and took our time, pausing to watch the pouring rain as it flooded the yard.   It was a welcome change.

Maybe it’s a symptom of unfettered youth, this rushing on to what’s next.  My ambitious and eager college student daughter is not even halfway through a semester before she’s planning the next.  Every step is planned and scheduled, from semesters abroad to internships that may lead to post-graduation employment.   She focuses on what’s around the corner, imagining life will be more exciting, stable, or less stressful when—.   I tell her to slow down and enjoy where she is, but the truth is a couple of misty decades ago I did the same.   I couldn’t wait to be an adult, unleashed and independent.  I would have adventures and embark on a life that was, above all, interesting, the opposite of ordinary and everything I imagined my mother’s was.   Life would start to be grand when I graduated, got a job, got married, once we had children, once they were out of diapers, once the business took off, once…

Now, a little further down the road, I see.  The ordinary minutes of the ordinary days and years have blown by, consumed by something like 27,000 meals, 4,000 loads of laundry, and 14,000 diaper changes.  Wiping the counters, feeding the pets, filling the gas tank, helping with school projects, taxiing to and from practices, church services, and friends’ houses.    Teaching the littles how to write their names, ride a bike, drive.  Reading The Seven Silly Eaters for the 85th time, wiping tears from scraped knees and broken hearts, gritting my teeth from a slammed door or the virtual door of headphones and a cellphone.  Beach sand in our shoes, doctor visits, braces, and pet burials.  Ordinary days.  Not quite the world-changing adventure I’d imagined at 20, but an adventure, I think, just the same.

Truly, some of those days it was a struggle just to make it to the other side of morning.  Many of them I wished for what was next because stories and diapers and teenaged angst were sometimes, honestly, less than riveting.  Naptime, bedtime, date night.   Now I just wish my mother were still here so I could tell her I get it.  This is the adventureThis is the interesting.  This was it all along.  The sticky kisses, unshaven husband, car trouble, health scares, and bounced checks.  Even the frustrations, hurry, and hurt.  This is what my mother and my sweet friends who have left too soon no longer get to savor.  This is what they clung so hard to and fought to stay for.

Savor means to taste and enjoy completely, which can only be done without hurry, without looking to the next bite before finishing the first.   Always looking for what’s next, what we imagine to be our sav-i-or, reverses the natural order of things.  It makes the foreground, the background, and we miss the gift of what’s now.  If we deliberately, on purpose, slow down and take the “i” out of the equation, the “I” that worries and chafes, we are left with savor.

I no longer seek the elusive unicorn of what’s next, or better, or more exciting around the corner.  Bob Marley’s “Every Little Thing Is Gonna Be Alright” is my current theme song.  It’s the second day of January.  Forget that vague holiday in February and enjoy today.   May 2016 unveil your ordinary.