If you live in the Northeast, you know that a big storm bellowed its way up the seaboard. In my town, we were promised about 15-18 inches and I think that’s about what we got. This made for one of those unequivocal snow days. The superintendent called it the night before when there were barely any flakes glittering and the sky carried a purple sheen into the night. It never got completely dark, and we woke to a blanket of snow on the ground and more snow thick in the air.
It was breathtaking.
Because I’d resigned myself to a homebound-for-all day the night before, I gave into the chaotic, overexcited nature of SNOW DAY more than usual. I set my sights low: a little work, a little laundry, a little soup making. I imagined agreeing to hot chocolate or popcorn or maple syrup on snow. Pretty early on, I even had a sweet moment of payback for the mountains of laundry four kids generate and all those lunches packed; the middle two guys took the toddler girl outside in the snow that morning. I stayed in my pajamas.
As days like this go, it went. The middle two dropped the snowy toddler off and went to their friend’s house to make tunnels in the snow. The second grader stayed; the tween returned. No cocoa, no popcorn, yes waffles with eldest brother followed by no cleaning up by the waffle chef.
That was trouble with a capital ‘T.’ The three other kids found their groove with their friends, the second guy, the one who seems much cheerier when the structured routine is thrumming along these days, just unraveled. No cleanup on the brunch waffles meant no dinner cooking project (refried beans and guacamole). In a miserable puddle—almost literally melted on the floor—he was beside me all afternoon whining. By the time the storm had ended and the darkness fallen and the promise of a regular day seemed almost within grasp, I had reached my limit.
When he’s miserable and oppositional and sarcastic and whiny all at once (believe me, you can be all these things at once), I find myself ready to collapse into a pool of whininess beside him. I know I’m in some trouble when thoughts like—but I’m trying so hard—push to the forefront.
I worked out. He followed me. I started to make soup. He curled up on the big chair nearby and read and complained about not getting to make beans.
I’m thinking you get the picture.
I felt in the soup. I didn’t realize the cumin jar was open-topped (I thought there was a plastic lid with holes) and I dumped a lot in by accident. I cursed. It was a mistake I’d lambasted the second kid for a few months back, overusing ingredients due to inattention. I surveyed the damage and realized not all that much had actually fallen in and so I stirred spices and herbs and onions together, waiting for the onions to turn translucent and soft and yellowish-brown-cumin-hued.
I called a friend back and she told me a kid—first year college student—in her hilltown community had been found dead, after a ski accident in Wyoming. He’d been skiing alone, while wending his way back to school. She was stunned. “How do I help my teenagers, who knew him, understand this?” she asked. “There is no sense to something like this happening to someone so young.”
She continued, “I am hugging them a lot today. I have to.”
**
For a wedding shower, I was once asked to bring something invaluable for the kitchen. I chose a wooden spoon, the kind I use when making soup. I wrote on the card about how wooden spoons are best with patina, earned over time and how chunky soups are the perfect metaphors for marriage and family. Think about it: each vegetable is itself, but in the soup-making process each vegetable softens and the flavors meld together, creating a new whole still reliant on each part. This is what we feel in our closest relationships: that we are each whole and that we yield to one another through love. The dependence of our young children cedes toward independence but in a marriage, and in a family, we learn interdependence. We cannot ever extricate our whole selves entirely from the mix.
As I stirred and felt teary and stirred and loved my children—especially the one making me doubt my parenting abilities that very day—I was reminded to believe in the soupiness sometimes—and to cherish it. I was reminded that the soupiness, really, it’s what we’ve got.
*Note, we have a winner for the Handsome in Pink dress: Galit!
