THE DOG'S WET AND LIFE IS WONDERFUL
"Chances are that so far, you've had a normal day. I have. This morning, I glared at my 13-year-old as he dozed, dawdled and procrastinated before kicking into overdrive to leave the house on time. I called cheerfully upstairs to awaken my 9-year-old -- who ignored me until my ear-shattering screech, "Get up now!" not only routed him but blasted from the window to frighten passersby. There was not a slice of bread in the house for school lunch sandwiches.
Normal day.
I'm learning to appreciate normal days. To savor, between glares and screeches, their magnificent mediocrity.
Most of life is normal days, so to be in love with them is to be in love with life. However much we await their arrival, it can be a long time between epiphanies and perfect vacations, between true-love sightings and our ships coming in.
And a long time between tragedies.
How many of us pass our lives in anticipation? Of the larger homes, smaller bodies and fattened bank accounts of our dreams; of the losses and disasters of our nightmares? We're so focused on what we pray will happen or on what we hope never will happen that we're blind to what is.
What is, for most people, is normal days.
Days when you're aware of being neither particularly sick nor well. When your relatives, friends and partners waver between buoying you up and sitting on your nerves; when you're too busy to notice much of anything -- except that you're too busy. Days when people ask, "So what happened today?" and you pause, think and come up with squat.
Those are days worth loving.
Most of us can't see that. Ours is a culture of complaint, which is ironic coming from a columnist, someone whose job might be described as "professional griper." But more and more, I'm appreciating those who appreciate. Or who at least hesitate to whine.
The other day, I jumped into a taxi and met Mamoun, a cabdriver who 12 years ago came to the United States from Ethiopia, which was for years torn by war. When I asked what's most striking about Americans, he smiled.
"People here complain a lot, don't they?" he said. "I think it's the freedom."
Mamoun's past taught him that wanting things to be better is natural, even necessary. But failing to acknowledge what you have is dumb.
I once knew a woman of 70 who was pretty and youthful-looking, in good health and living close to loved ones, but who never stopped complaining because she was, after all, 70 -- old and fading in a youth-worshiping world. I knew another woman of 70 in similar circumstances who seemed happy all the time because she was, well, 70 -- imagine having lasted so well, so long!
What I'm talking about, I think, is gratitude. I don't know when so many of us lost the gift for it, when it became fashionable to overlook how amazing it is to have food on the table, family members who love you, friends who make you laugh when you need to. When we stopped understanding that whether our breakneck lives have us breathing too fast, or our stagnation has us sucking air in slow motion, it is a blessing to be breathing at all.
But the best reason to treasure normal days is that when they're gone, they're exactly what you wish you had back.
Most of us have lived through periods of tragedy or loss when all we wanted was to feel okay again. Not to feel great, or terrific, but just okay. When my brother died years ago, I walked around in so much pain that feeling fine seemed like an oasis of impossibility. Boredom, it seemed, would be heaven.
The pain passed. But I haven't felt bored since.
Recently, I was leafing through a favorite book, "A Grateful Heart -- Daily Blessings for the Evening Meal from Buddha to the Beatles," a volume filled with gratitude-inducers, and found this prayer by Mary Jean Iron:
"Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are. Let me learn from you, love you, bless you. . . . Let me not pass by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow. Let me hold you while I may, for it may not always be so. "One day I shall dig my nails into the earth, or bury my face in the pillow . . . and want, more than all the world, your return."
I'd quote more, but my awful dog is downstairs yapping, flinging himself against the door. When I let him out, he will once again dive into the local creek, roll around in the creek bed and cover himself with mud. I get to capture him, hold him down and get doused, hosing him off.
Wonderful, normal day."
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