Hi, I’m Mice Door. Do you have a last name? My last name is Door. D-O-O-R.
The above lines are what Sarah said as I drove her to her weekend retreat, catching me by delighted surprise as she always does. The concept of surprise has been on my mind this week after a conversation with my mom. I was regaling her with the latest news about what schools had waited until the last minute to share with parents, such as events for the parents to attend or help with, as if parents don’t have other things they might have scheduled months ago. This happens all the time. I’m always affronted and gobsmacked, thinking about how I would do it differently. My mom gently queried when I thought I might stop being surprised by this behavior. I was surprised by her question because I thought she was going to say, “When do you think they will get it together?” I cracked up, laughing long and loud, realizing how absurd it is for me to expect different behavior after so many years of various people and places doing things the way they do them. I can even have some softer understanding that everyone is overloaded and doing the best they can.
This idea of my expectations and being surprised by things that really aren’t surprising continues to provide food for thought and meshes well with my new week-old practice of sitting quietly for five or ten minutes a day. I don’t know that I would call it meditating, although it might be. But what I do when I’m sitting is I think about whatever is coming up in my day or life when I might start feeling stressed. I think about what precisely I’m concerned about and practice letting it go, reminding myself about my actual life priorities of love and kindness. So often those priorities take a back seat to what I think I need to get to them, such as order, timeliness, and other people’s choices making sense. I’m now aiming to be less surprised when other people’s choices don’t make sense to me, aiming to be more at ease even if it means being less in control. This is not for the faint of heart!
Tuesday night I practiced being relaxed about getting to the Straight No Chaser concert on time, knowing how much Sarah would care about getting a t-shirt and putting it on before the show started. I hadn’t anticipated that our well-oiled plan would run into two full parking garages! This wasn’t my favorite scenario but I do think my cells stayed a little more relaxed than usual. We finally found a parking garage with room and started the cold walk to the concert venue. On the way, we had a mini exemplification of who Carl and I are on some deep level. There were many people walking to the same place we were and so there was a group of us waiting to cross a street. The intersection was full of vehicles that didn’t make it through on their green. If those vehicles were cars then probably they would have waited for the river of pedestrians to cross in front of them when it was the pedestrians’ turn. But you must understand how buses in Pittsburgh operate. If they are in the middle of an intersection when their light turns red, then that red light is to be damned and they will continue through the intersection even if they had been stopped for traffic. One pedestrian in our large group either didn’t know this or wanted to challenge it, and he started walking in front of the bus, which then started driving forward. I started screaming “STOP” as loudly as I could. I don’t actually know if I was screaming at the bus or the man playing chicken with the bus. I think I was screaming at the driver and realizing how powerless I was. Meanwhile, as the bus won (the man relented and stepped back), Carl took out his phone to get a picture of the license plate of the bus. I feel like somehow this whole moment shows who we are in hot water. I will scream the loudest and Carl will take calm action. No one else around us did either. In this case, I think both may have been called for and go well together, although we decided not to do anything in the end. The behavior of Pittsburgh buses is not a surprise.
The Straight No Chaser concert was funny and wonderful as always, and Sarah made it just past intermission before deciding she was DONE. Carl took her to the car and then miraculously found a parking spot closer to the theater so that he was ready when Amy and I emerged.
Friday afternoon the girls decorated a gingerbread house that I baked and erected the day before. We do this every year, but this was the first time the house completely fell apart mid-decoration! That was a surprise! Luckily I was able to get the walls back up and the roof back on in short order while we laughed about it.
Unsurprisingly, Amy produced some gorgeous drawings for her school art class. She had to do three large drawings that told a story. She drew two spine squishies balanced on each other balanced on a yoga block (she uses the yoga block to do Schroth therapy), her old Rigo Cheneau brace (hard plastic), and her current Whisper brace (from a photo because hers was in the shop for repairs). I said it was unsurprising that Amy made gorgeous drawings, and yet her skills continue to improve and somehow she takes a pencil and blank paper and creates something amazing, surprising me every time.
May you retire your surprise for things that predictably irk you and never lose your ability to be delightfully surprised by those you love.
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