Ordinary Things

This morning I was watching Leave It to Beaver (don't be jealous of my glam life). In case you've never seen the show (because maybe you're not into classic TV or you've been living in a bunker or something), allow me to briefly summarize it for you. Leave It to Beaver tells the story of little brother Beaver's incessant shenanigans and older brother Wally's punishment from their parents because if he'd been keeping a better eye on Beaver, their sweet little boy would never have gotten into said shenanigans. 

(Can you tell I'm a firstborn?) 

Anyway, in today's episode Beaver and Wally got high-paying jobs working for the circus. (No, seriously.) As Beaver described the excitement of cleaning the horses and mucking out the stalls, his parents looked at each other with knowing skepticism. And, of course (spoiler alert!), they were right.  

What I noticed about Beaver's description of cleaning animal stalls and scrubbing down horses, though, was this: He talked about what they would "get to" do at their job. 

Get to. Not have to. 

Ten years ago this week, Chloe got sick. What started as a simple virus quickly transformed into something terrifying and life-threatening, and she was hospitalized for what felt like an eternity (but was actually more like a week). At the hospital, we lived in a haze of uncertainty, anxiety, and exhaustion. 

One of my clearest memories of that week is of Darryl and myself standing at the window in Chloe's room, numbly staring out at the gray city. As I stood there, all I could feel was a longing to be home again - a longing for ordinary life. Hearing the shouts of children fighting over a toy. Washing piles of laundry, blotting stolen nail polish out of the carpet, spreading peanut butter on bread, all on repeat, repeat, repeat. 

My dream was to go home with my daughter - to get to do it all again. 

And then earlier this year, I had two totally unrelated surgeries within two months of each other. Recovering from the second one, I felt discouraged and found myself again longing for ordinary things. I made a list of goals for when I was feeling better in an effort to improve my spirits. At the time, they felt outrageously audacious: 

Maintain a tidy house. 

Feed the dogs on a schedule. 

Start running again. 

Keep up with laundry. 

Cook dinner. 

Meet with clients every week. 

Gratefully, I'm back to doing those things on a more or less regular basis. My wildly audacious goals have become routine again. Ordinary. Mundane. Unnoticed. 

Unappreciated. 

And I guess I needed Beaver to remind me what life has shown me over and over: 

Ordinary things are sacred. 

In moments of extraordinary pain, they're the things we miss the most. And remembering that today, maybe we don't need trauma to remind us to appreciate the small stuff. 

Maybe we just need Wally's annoying little brother. 

Getting to Wash the Breakfast Dishes, 

Becki