It’s really tempting when life is going well to congratulate ourselves on our brilliance. It’s equally tempting when life seems to be falling apart to castigate ourselves for not holding it together. And it’s most tempting of all to compare, not just summits to valleys, but peak to peak. We’re standing over here on our own mountain with this birds-eye view of our neighbors’ thinking, I thought we had it together, but… maybe they have it more together. We managed to have dinner as a family at 7:30 after soccer… on paper plates because no one did the dishes last night. How, we ask, from our bystander perspective, can we compete with the garden-grown, self-milled feast plated by that girl we sat next to in college astronomy? Perspective. It’s hard, when you’re looking across at someone else’s mountain, to measure relative elevation. You’re thinking the point of this post should be that it’s not only difficult to compare peak to peak, apples to oranges, but also detrimental and pointless. Noted. And agreed. But not really my point.
Failure is my point. And before anyone points out to me that Gone with the Wind was rejected 38 times before it was published, or that Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, I would like to point out that I am not Margaret Mitchell or Michael Jordan. I’m really just trying to get through the day. And I suppose they were, too, before they became … who they became. And possibly even after.
Life, especially on a weekday morning, or evening, with two children, is a sprint. A good sprinter is a rare thing. It’s just not what we’re made for. The faster you’re going, the harder you go down, and who wants that? For every sprint hurdler, there are a dozen of us for whom haste just makes waste. But when I was washing my face this morning and took a slice out of my chin with my thumbnail? When I was emptying the soaking skillet of its stagnating overnight water, which sloshed over the side of the sink, onto my work pants and bare feet? I have to think, Really? Would this have happened to garden-fed astronomy girl? Of course not, because she probably cleanses her face only with coconut oil on an organic cotton ball, and would never let a sauté pan sit overnight, even on the shady pretext of “soaking” it.
Fall down 7 times, get up 8, they say. Failure is just opportunity in work clothes, they say. Oh, they say a lot of things. People don’t stop talking. That doesn’t mean you want to hear any of it when you’re standing in 12-hour-old dishwater. Because I had a meeting this morning that started 35 minutes prior to the school day, and I wanted to be proactively less late than more late, I sent the girls on their scooters so that they would arrive at the playground at the first possible staffed moment, after the 5-10 minutes it would take to get to school. “Text me when you get there,” I said. “Okay,” said my responsible oldest (I had just written her a letter of recommendation to be the class banker based on her maturity and responsibility, so I was pretty confident of our arrangement). “Is your phone charged?” “Yes.” And on the way out the door, “Do you have your phone? Remember to text me.” “Mom! I will.”
Seven hours later.
All day I knew it was probably fine. It’s a direct route. The school didn’t call. No other parents called. The hospital didn’t call. And yet … someone who washed out sauté pans right after dinner, who hadn’t packed a hard-boiled egg for lunch — not out of portion control but out of a disorganized personal household food shortage — could probably get their children to school without incident. I mean, there was no incident. But there could have been. Potentially. Because I wanted to be less late to a meeting I was already late for.
A couple of weeks ago, I was in charge of Native American themed snack for my older daughter’s Girl Scout troop. I bought butternut squash, enough for 22, cooked it, and then left it out until 3am, when I remembered, sat straight up in bed and moved it to the fridge. “It’s fine,” my husband said. “I’m going to have to agree with Patrick,” my co-worker said. “It’s squash. Can it even go bad?” said my friend. “I’ll get all new,” I said. And I got enough butternut squash for 22. Again. Of course, enough squash for 22 servings, and enough squash for 22 9-year-olds, is a very different thing. And so…. I had a LOT of butternut squash (and the first batch was just fine, btw; we ate it; it’s squash, what could go bad?). I ate butternut squash pretty much three meals a day for, well, days. Butternut waffles. Butternut pancakes. Mashed butternut with fruit puree. Roasted with a little honey… Some of it went better than others.
Tonight, spring rolls. “Hm. Have you done this before?” “Nope.” “Are they supposed to be falling apart like that?”
Yes. Yes they are. Because they’re made with rice paper. Who in their right mind would even begin a meal, on a Thursday night, that begins with rice paper? Truman Capote said that failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor. We used peanut sauce. But, whatever. Equally valid.
There are so many little times during the day that we think, !!!Shoot. …Or, Well, if I had those ten seconds back… We’re broadcasting in stark HD on our own mountain, but the image is a lot more forgiving from a distance. Rudyard Kipling called out both Triumph and Disaster as imposters, and of course he was right. For every omelet that suddenly becomes a good scramble… well, who doesn’t love a good scramble? Our failures don’t define us, thank goodness. Our successes are as good as the next starting gun. Both come and go. But our perspective… over which we have the most control… that’s really what it comes down to. It’s jarringly high def, for sure. But it’s also brilliantly, palpably real. Not always pretty. But substantial and ours.
And so, what have we learned, other than a dozen ways to prepare squash? Slow down a little. Sprinting doesn’t shorten the distance, just the journey. Wash your face carefully, and make children responsible for dinner clean-up (it’s fun! bubbles! steel wool! bubbles!). I’ll put my crumbling spring rolls up against any garden-to-table dinner without fear (in principle… not specifically head-to-head…) And I’ll have a delightful spring roll scramble for tomorrow’s lunch.