The textures of the quotidian

How many times do we stop in our life and go “this is worth it?”  Not “I’m thankful for…”, not some artificial value judgement.  Just “yeah, it’s all worth it for this, now.”

Here i am, working on a late deadline — late because of health problems but not an excuse.  I’m waking up tearing up at my arms because of eczema brought on by stress and screaming at myself for how slow I’m being — and having added to my several full time jobs (3 series going, another starting soon; a house to keep up and teens to manage — you figure it out) yet another — homeschooling Eric (he’s doing fine, thank you.)  

Days are spent writing.  Weekends too.  Nights would be, if I could stay up that long, which I can’t.  There’s the interruptions of seeing what Eric is doing — absent which he would major in comics and sandwiches.  There’s the cats who, keeping up with family trends recently have just undergone several medical procedures.  There’s various medical appointments for self and Robert and speech therapy for Eric (who is making remarkable progress.)  And there’s those things that I think are the most important part of raising a teen.  The times a kid comes to me with phylosophical question or an historical idea.  And I take time off and I discuss it with them — or course.  This being the house it is, it often involves my pulling several books off the shelves to show the relevant passages.  About once a week, somehow, in my copious spare time, I have to kick the troops into some sort of order and make them dust.  (The suggestion to just train D’Artagnan, aka the butterpat, to rub himself on the floor daily and thus absorb the dust into his mop like fur was vetoed.  He’d only go and rub it all on my black sweaters or my sofas.)

If you get the impression I’m wound tighter than a really tight spring, you’re right.  Which is why moments of sheer “this is all worth it” shock me.  Today, at dinner — garlic chicken, roast potatoes and caesar salad with homemade crutons, why do you ask? —  after I “decanted” the dinner that been simmering all day and called out to the guys, and while Robert was calling the younger one, who was in the living room with Operation Chaos, I had one of those moments.  For just a second I saw us as we were from the outside.  A geeky family, living for our various work and our books, and probably inexpressibly boring for anyone else.  (Apropos some survey or something Dan was filling recently, we were amused these people expected us to have done all sorts of strange/fun/wrong things.  And our reaction was “When would we have doen that?  Mostly we read, work, talk to each other and occasionally have very tame fun together as a family” — our latest craze being games of minigolf on weekend nights.  And then we looked at each other and went “Oh, boy, are we boring.)  Our days border on mind-bogglingly routine.  Excitement around here happens when the new delivery from Amazon arrives.  And yet… and yet… there at our dinky kitchen table, as Eric dragged his lazzy little behind in to dinner, I realized “this is the good stuff.  this is what’s important.  This is what I would die for, in a minute.”

I’ve lived — for at least some time — in three continents and several countries.  I’ve seen “the sights” people talk about.  I’ve learned new languages; attended embassy parties; been slim and shapely enough to fit in the best dresses, and owned them too.  I’ve participated in demonstrations for and against causes I was passionate about.  I’ve been honored and humbled with the friendship of people who are much smarter and BETTER than I am.  I’ve grown up to have that pleasure I fear few people have — of meeting my mythical heros of childhood and adollescence and rubbing elbows with them as a colleague.  And yet, which day would I capture and re-live if I could?

Eight years ago we didn’t have time/money to go to worldcon.  Instead, we found ourselves with the kids, over labor day weekend, in Denver, getting very bored.  Early morning, while the kids were showering, I flicked through the channels, away from Saturday morning cartoons, and found a feature on rollercoasters.  They talked about this amusement park in Denver — not Six Flags (whatever it’s named now) or water world or one of those.  No, it was a park we’d never heard of.  Lakeside.  But it had this great wooden coaster rated in the first ten in the nation.

Here I should point out that I don’t do coasters.  I don’t do practically any amusement park rides, except some vintage merrygorounds.  I don’t like going fast unless I’m wrapped in car; I don’t like hanging upside down and I have vertigo.  I also refuse to pay to be made uncomfortable.  (If I needed to ride a roller coaster to save one of the boys I’d do it in a hearbeat, but it’s not “fun” and I see no reason to pretend it is.)  But I love amusement parks.  Dan and the boys take the rides.  I walk around with a book — preferrably a paperback — and read or people watch.

We were pleasantly surprised in Lakeside.  It is cheap — cheaper during their Labor Day special — and somedays if a bomb were broadcast in English we’d be the only ones to duck and cover.  The rides are old and I understand are not “extreme.”  But the rollercoaster — the guys tell me — is good;  they have bumperboats on a little lake; there’s a vintage merrygoround with all sorts of animals.  And they have this little train that goes all around the lake that gives the park its name.  At night their illuminate the towers at their entrance which look like something out of a nineteenth century Arabian fantasy and probably are.  (The park is that old.)   The guys had so much fun.  And so did I, watching them.  We closed with a ride around the lake in the little train, at night, with the lights reflecting in the water.

When we got to the car, we realized it was ten thirty on a Saturday and we hadn’t eaten.  There was no way we were going to get into Pete’s Kitchen which, back then, had lines around the block on weekend evenings (it still might.  We usually go there earlier.)  And all the restaurants we could go to had long waits.  Eric was falling asleep against me.  On a whim, Dan called P.F. Chang’s which was then new to the area and they reservations.

So we ended the day, sweaty and gritty, introducing Eric to Peking Duck — which he loved.  (Still does.)

Looking back, I can remember that entire day — the feel of the air, the jeans and t-shirt I was wearing.  Eric, still babyish looking, in his little overalls (which for some reason had yellow elephants all over them.)  Robert trying to convince them he could still go into the kiddie area (at seven he was the size of most ten year olds.)  Eric, on tippy toes, trying to make us think he was tall enough to drive the bumperboats.  The book I was reading — a mystery set in World War I, which I have somehow misplaced before I got the author’s name — and then afterwards, the kids tired but excited over the new restaurant and going out to eat some place much nicer than we normally took them to at that age.

And that, ladies and gentlemen — as boring as this makes me — is what I hope heaven is like.