Enjoy Every Sandwich

Mike and I have been talking a lot lately about making every moment count. We have sort of different ideas about it, and I can really only tell you mine, since I really only understand mine.

I am having lots of fun with my kids. I love being married to Mike. We laugh every day and I can't imagine being happier than I am right now.

But.

And there's always a but, right? Things are busy. Things are crazy. Last night we had three crying kids at the dinner table, and that's hard. (Gage could not swallow the bite of roasted eggplant in his mouth and it started dribbling chunkily into his lap in a most disgusting way, Lila fell out of her chair and landed sharply on her hip, and Josie was...well...she's a baby.) Mike and I stared across the table at each other, half-grinning in that insane "Where do we go from here?" way.

There's always more to do. I cannot take care of the kids, prepare meals, keep up on laundry *and* have a spotless house. I just can't do it. And I don't really care. Who cares? I'd like to have a clean house, but it's not going to be me who keeps it perfect. I have priorities, and there are a lot of things that I need to do in a day before I collapse from exhaustion and stare unhappily at the cherry juice stain on the table, or the pile of socks and undies on the bathroom floor. Everything is sticky and nothing is perfect. And I'm okay with that.

Mike likes to quote Warren Zevon who, in his last days, advised us all to "Enjoy every sandwich." Sage advice, words that put a lump in my throat, but, of course, impossible to do. I propose that maybe part of the joy of this time is being overwhelmed. I am living (struggling through, at times) a very special time in my life, a time that I will forever look back on with want. Maybe it's okay to be so immersed in picture books and paint and flour and markers and tape and laundry and, yes, crying, that it's a privilege to be snowed under by it. There's so much little kid in my life right now that later, when I miss it, I'll remember fondly the gluttonous overflow of little kid.

It's what Mike and I call the "Steak Again?" phenomenon. I worked for years in the kitchen of a fine dining restaurant, and employee meals were on the house - whatever the restaurant had a surplus of on any given day. Some days were light - a big bowl of pasta with fresh tomato sauce. Other days were fantastic - a thick slice of shrimp and crab and cheese heaven with a flaky crust. Most days it was steak. The first couple of weeks I was thrilled to have tender strips of medium-rare meat, with a big serving of buttery garlic mashed potatoes and sauteed vegetables. It was so pleasing to have this fine meal, for free, after an evening of hard work.

After a couple of months, though, and then years, those of us in the 'back of the house' began jokingly complaining, "Steak again?" And then kind of groaning for real, because there's only so much red meat a person can eat.

I don't know if this makes any sense. It's hard to explain.

I used to babysit for a four-year-old boy - a clever, creative kid, actually smart as a whip. One day his dad was kissing him goodbye and said, "I love you. You know I love you, right?" and the boy said "I know," in an eye-rolling, give-me-a-break kind of way. How delightful! How amazing to be so often reminded of your parents' love, that you can brush it off, just completely knowing that it's there.

Steak again?

Imagine having the overabundance of such a happy thing that it's actually, pleasurably, too much. It's a benefit to be so full of something wonderful, that it's everywhere you look.

So while Mike tries to enjoy every sandwich I'm more content to acknowledge the craziness of my life right now and bask in it. I have the privilege of being annoyed by mopping spilled milk for the third time today, and I have the privilege of reading this book one more time, when we all already know it by heart.

It won't be like this forever.



As for my favorite Warren Zevon quote, it's also rather live-in-the-day:

Don't let us get sick
Don't let us get old
Don't let us get stupid, all right?
Just make us be brave
And make us play nice
And let us be together tonight.