Defaulting to Yes
Reading at the table, Texas ceramics, and a strawberry rye tart.
Little Friday (Thursday for the uninitiated) rolls in with rain today. Still, I am throwing myself onto the promise of the weekend gratefully after what feels like a few days of swimming through resin. Highlights will include: kid soccer games, hosting out-of-town family, and sneaking away for a whirlwind work trip to the newly re-opened Cataloochee Ranch, perched on a mountain ridge in the Smokies. I’ll also make some sort of indulgent dessert for my FIL — and I hope you find more than one way to infuse sweetness into your weekend, too.
Maybe she just needed me to stop talking for a few minutes.
I was homeschooled, which meant that I spent many hours of the day with my mom, especially in early grade school. These hours were happy, productive, sweet. Somehow Mom also managed to prepare a full meal three times a day; for example, it was no big deal to wake up to freshly baked muffins on a random Tuesday morning. But for two of those meals (breakfast and lunch), I was allowed to read at the table. I remember sipping apple juice out of short plastic tumblers s l o w l y so I could have an excuse to stay at the table and finish my chapter. I remember propping my book up behind my bowl of oatmeal, dropping out of conversation and into another world. The whole family would sit around the table, sharing some homemade meal, and then me: a book in front of my face, there with them and yet not there at all.
It feels rude?
I was eating lunch alone with my youngest child (3) this week when that memory returned. Desi grinned at me in his current scrunched-nose way, munching on apple slices and resolutely ignoring his chicken. Lunch like that with Desi—seated next to him, no one else home but us, not multi-tasking—already feels rare. Soon enough, it will claim a spot on the endangered list of parenting experiences. He’s my last baby and he’s growing up. I shared countless lunches of this sort with my oldest, until I had another child, who sadly never really got the solo lunch with mom moment (sorry to middle children everywhere), and then they both went off to school every day and now Desi is almost there with them. Deep breath.
I don’t have the constitution for the “you never know it’s the last time until it’s over” line of thought. Thinking of the last time I’ll do anything with my children—hold them, nurse them, pull them into my lap, pick them up, play tooth fairy, etc. etc.—can just send me right through the shredder if I contemplate it too long, so I mostly don’t. I bring this all up to say that even this week — when the fleetingness of the moment with Desi struck me live, in the actual moment itself, a kind of cosmic alarm dinging like pay attention! hold onto this precious thing that’s almost gone! — even then, I still felt a tiny urge to get lost in a book while I ate my lunch.
Looking back, I marvel that Mom allowed me to read for all those meals. We were a very together sort of family — always talking — and the kitchen table was the nucleus of our shared life. I wonder how I would respond if my oldest child constantly brought a book to our family meals, dipping out mentally. Probably not well! Invested in building relational bonds and teaching conversational skills and developing a love for food, I think I would tell him to put the book away. I’d be worried about encouraging disengagement or bad manners. I would say no, because that is my default.
Saying no was Mom’s default, too, but for some reason, she said yes to reading at the table. Sure, maybe she needed a rare few minutes of silence when I wasn’t talking to her — but more likely, she saw the delight of reading written on my face. She saw who I was and what I loved and let me grow into it. I think there’s a lot to learn from this yes; I think the lesson of yes is showing up everywhere I turn lately, in parenting and far beyond. When Desi paused mid-lunch to announce, “I think I should have some ice cream in a cone right now,” there was really only one answer.
The weekend’s on the horizon. Maybe you should….
Think flowers for Mother’s Day. Get way ahead of a last minute scramble and give her something special from Austin artist Julie Spako, whose delicate, hand-painted ceramics are inspired by her grandmother’s Blue Willow, Texas wildflowers, and embroidered knits. (If ethereal yet earthy ceramics are not your mama’s jam, an Owala waterbottle makes a great gift for Boomer moms who aren’t clued into waterbottle culture yet. Urban Outfitters has the best colorways.)
Clean just one thing. Spring cleaning is a siren this time of year, but don’t let it lure you in too deep. Instead, plan to set just a fraction of some area in order: one sticky shelf in the refrigerator, one dreadful corner of your closet, one room with dusty baseboards. Limiting scope so severely allows you to be very thorough in the span of about ten minutes. Serious reward for minimal outlay of effort. (And if the pleasure of finishing catapults you into extra cleaning, that’s just a bonus.)
Bake a rustic strawberry rye tart. Strawberries are at their peak now, so carpe diem and make this tart. Once you’ve acquired rye flour, it’s simple enough to whip up in between whatever else you are doing this weekend and eat it outside with people you enjoy.
Thanks for reading! See you next time.