Choosing Ordinary.

Time well spent in the small and mundane

In our unkept little living room each morning, there is laughter and the smell of coffee beans percolating from the kitchen nearby. Likely, the window is cracked ever so slightly open, and the giggles of my children meet the singing swallows in the new day’s dawn, exuberant and gleeful.

There is no hurry. No unspoken rush, nor prodding push towards a schedule too burdened as to meet our unhurried still. The day’s deeds and necessities will eventually meet us, but not now — the world awakens as we do.

We linger long in our pjs, disheveled hair and furrowed brows, a quarter-line crease tracing our eyes squinting at the light bursting through the horizon like a song.

We will likely do this again tomorrow and the day after too, each day rhythmic and wholly uneventful.

I mind not.

Distant observers may call it boring,

Friends and kin, quaint.

Lovers may demand more adventure,

But I, frankly, could never care less.

For me, I’ll choose the simple life. The quiet life. The routine life.

Before you say it, yes, it gets much, much messier than this.

---

They say it goes so fast and that the days are long but the years are short.

And I look back at pictures from only a few months ago and weep, not because of what was lost on us but because of how briefly we had to cherish it all.

Days become weeks. Weeks become months. Months become years. Each coo, each daddy hold me, each diaper change one closer to the last. It all passes us by without flinching, leaving us in the aftermath of denial and of wishing we had just one more day with them as children.

I suppose it is true, after all.

It really does go so fast.

The timeless adages always reveal timeless truths, but it hurts far more to think about it, in the moment.

Time does something to us all.

---

When my son, Everhett was born, I was suicidal. When he was only six weeks old, I admitted myself to an impatient behavioral health institution to get help and claim my Reasons for Living — a psychiatric inventory tool used to confirm to yourself (mainly) why suicide is a poor idea and how life really is worth living.

Sometimes I guess we all need those little reminders of how good we’ve got it.

The recount makes me tear up.

And let me tell you something. I don’t know why I had to go through all of that, or why I was unable to snap out of it and go home to my kids and wife with a smile on my face.

But I do know one thing:

Despite the well-intentioned comments that mostly came off as jabs from those who don’t quite understand mental illness, wrestling with that stuff isn’t selfish.

I just think that sometimes we forget that there is a light in our life that is always on and that perhaps we just need to enter into a different space to be able to see it.

Oh, and that the darkness doesn’t stem from us, but from the spaces we occupy. It may be hard to see your hand when it’s right in front of your face in the pitch black, but that doesn’t mean that we ourselves are the source of the darkness, if you get what I’m saying.

Anyways, going through all of that really makes a man see just how precious life is and how fast even our own brains — and the enemy — can try to sabotage everything and turn it all on its own head in a blink.

And for the record, life really is worth living, by the way.

---

“Daddy, is tomorrow Date Day?”

Parker’s soft ocean-blue eyes meet mine glowing, childlike curiosity glistening through her like waves crashing along the tide, while Rhett comes running.

“Date day? Date day? Daddddyyyy go date day wit youuuu?”

For almost three years old, his body still feels so light, yet still so grown up. His energy is unmatched, boundless and bending, running circles around my wife and I who slowly watch our living room turn into a whirlwind of toys and Legos and books, all holding secret memories and laughter.

Saturdays have been what we call, “Date Day” ever since my oldest was six days old.

It all starts the same: a hurried breakfast and brushed teeth, throwing on clothes and stuffing the diaper bag full of creativity — coloring sheets, crayons, markers, and of course, diapers. Then, I twirl a fresh bottle in my hands Clint Eastwood-style before stowing it in its side pocket holster.

And on we go.

If the weather proves nice, we first head to the park. There is Woodchip Park and Pebble Park and Pool Park up on the hill. It makes no difference but each hold their secrets.

Every park does.

The sun looks down at us as my kids peer up, teleporting to faraway places. The playground becomes a pirate ship and soon the earth is water or lava or some other dangerous entity.

And I? I’m put in charge of the brigade. We sail the seas and withstand volcanos, fight mutant Hydras and wrestle Dragons, all as the sun rises to attention and the morning far too quickly becomes noon.

Then we pile on in (after we’ve saved the world once again) and head to the familiar coffee shop where worries are swept away by blueberry muffins and chocolate ice cream.

I have to add: this isn’t our usual coffee shop. But it is a Barnes & Noble like the one we usually go to. This one is just far more picturesque and absolutely took my breath away when we visited it for the first time.

It isn’t Disney World, but it is Holy in the sense that it is set apart for a purpose — to honor this precious time in which we have been given as a family, and offer gratitude to the One who has so graciously given it.

After that, it’s time for lunch.

---

There is always so much to do, so many things to accomplish, being a parent.

But my favorite thing of all is just observing.

Gaudium vitae. The joy of life, I mean.

I watch them as they color and draw, little hands developing motor skills trying to recreate the world through smiley faces, oddly shaped figures, and coloring that bleeds through the margins.

I hear their banter, of Bible stories and books and how my daughter hopes to be a Fiah fighta someday. I breathe deep and they do too, nothing else in the whole wide world seems to matter as long as we are together.

And I’m reminded of how fast it all goes.

How quickly they change.

How soon they will become adults themselves with their own busy schedules and families to attend to.

How rare it will be to have them home, in my arms, for Date Day.

I know I’ll miss these years. These quick, quick years. Here for a moment, gone the next.

Time moves on, it always does, but it will be spent like precious currency, invested in memories that far outlive the seconds that made them.

Memories that redeem the moments we’re given.

When time is spent well, its value becomes immeasurable.

What a priceless gift it is then, to be alive.

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So as I begin each day, likely the same way as the last one, I give thanks. Call us old fashioned or simple or the like, so be it.

For me, I’ll choose the simple life. The life that isn’t hurried. Isn’t scattered. Isn’t apart.

I’ll take the Saturday Date Day and the morning cup of coffee.
The sunrise yawning across the eastern sky.
The coloring pages taped to the walls, imperfectly perfect captures of our life, drawn by the kids.
The laughter that fills our unkept living room as if it were a cathedral.

And I’ll hold this treasured time for as long as I can have it.
Because now I know better than ever how precious it is —
how priceless it is —
to simply be alive.