Getting Used to Things We Hadn't Expected

This summer, we learned how to relax.

I’m sleeping past 7:00 most days. It is glorious. I haven’t slept later than 6:30 for most of the past six years. The kids still wake up stupid early but they don’t need me now like they did when they were little and really had to be supervised every single waking hour. The ages of four and six are vastly different from one and three. Sometimes they grab their own bananas or blueberries to kick off breakfast without me. Mostly, they wake up and play together. Pokemon or LEGOs or Barbies or some combination of all three. They play so well together that I’m terrified to announce it here on the internet for fear I’ve now jinxed it all by putting it out into the universe. Like the universe is pricking up its ears now and going, “Oh yeah. Those Williams kids have been good for too long. Let’s throw in some early-morning mischief and screaming.” (Please, no.)

We used to wake up and go somewhere. Anywhere. Lots of wheres. Every day. Every morning. For almost the entirety of the past six and a half years. I was proud of it. “Don’t you just want to stay home?” I’ve been asked. But I didn’t. I really didn’t. And neither did they. They got bored at home. So did I. Sometimes I would try to stay home but by about 10:00 we’d all be going crazy. We’d usually eat breakfast and get ready and pack up and be out of the house by 9:00. If we left at 9:30 it felt like we were running behind. And it was good. They would go to a camp or we’d go to the zoo or a park or the library or meet up with friends or run errands. Every day. We’d come back for lunch and hang out at home in the backyard all afternoon. And that’s been summer (and fall, and winter, and spring) for most of the past six years.

This summer, we don’t do that. Like, ever. Today I tried to get us to leave the house at 9:00 to go to the nature center and we couldn’t, like literally could not, make it into the car until about 9:18. The kids are hardly ever in the car anymore and it seems to create confusion about things that used to be routine, like “Oh, hi. Remember how you need to wear these things called shoes?” and “No, you do not need to bring three stuffed animals, a LEGO minifigure, an assorted variety of plastic crap, and two suckers along on our eight-minute car ride.” We’re also re-learning the use of these things called “seatbelts”.

Most days now, we don’t eat breakfast until 8:00 or so. I cannot stress enough how late this is for us. It’s unprecedented. I roll out of bed and make coffee and butter toast. Still in glasses and an unwashed face and sweatpants I picked up off the floor. Then we clean up and get ready (I’ll save you the many motivational techniques I’ve used in the past six months for the whole “it’s get-ready-for-the-day-time”) and I shove everyone out the door for a bike ride. Though it’s not so forced anymore. They used to whine but now it’s just routine. And after our bike ride we’re just...home. I have a loose morning schedule with things like silent reading and some math or art and iPad time but we’re just...here. At our house.

I thought I would be going crazy by this point, by mid-August, after it felt like we’d already lived through the entirety of summer by the first week of June, but I’m not. I mean, I am. But not as bad as I thought. (Because for real if I stop to think about *everything* too hard, well, then I start to lose my mind.) It’s like this quote I saw recently, though the source of the quote was “unknown” and I’m always skeptical of those. But this one stuck in my head:

“Life is for most of us the continuous process of getting used to things we hadn't expected.”

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I still run our house by routines. My mind and body naturally seem to fall into these patterns, even when I’m not trying to.

We have a morning “school” routine. This is me when I’m trying to create routine. There’s a sign on the wall that’s numbered and color-coded. It starts with our bike ride and ends with iPad time. Though it’s not so strict. We can ditch it if we run into some neighborhood friends playing at the park.

I realized my whole day has been set up with these routines. Not consciously. Though according to a recent EnneaThought for the Day, I “cope with problems by striving to be competent.” Which reminded me of something Nadia Bolz-Weber wrote once, about being in a group where they went around and told each other the worst adjective someone could use to describe them. The people in her story said things like “stupid” and “boring”. I didn’t have to stop and think for a second what mine was. The word that jumped immediately to mind was “incompetent”.

Hence the routines, I guess. Which are illustrated most overtly by that schedule hanging in our dining room but also by the way I have of slipping my headphones on with a podcast at 2:00 every day while the kids have their mid-afternoon dose of screentime. It’s when I go outside to water the plants and check the mail. The way that’s also when I sit and fold laundry or organize the mudroom and clean up the kitchen, a gentle re-entry to the world after I’ve spent the past hour or so working. Or the way I unload the dishwasher every morning, first thing, while getting the kids their breakfast. Just these rhythms set up so I can move about my day, get things done. So I can be competent.

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The routine leads us to our backyard every afternoon around 2:30. We eat a snack on the deck and sometimes I read to them and they peel off, one-by-one as they finish their crackers and applesauce pouches to play on the playset or dig in the sandbox or see how big a splash they can make in the pool.

It’s here that I sit, because though I have a small burst of energy around 2:00, I’m almost always useless by mid-afternoon. 

We’ve learned to rest, the kids and I. Because of the pandemic. Because of these routines. Or maybe in spite of them. They play (mostly) contentedly in the backyard. And while our summers always involve a lot of backyard time, it’s like this year they’ve rediscoverd it. I sit on the deck and read (or *ahem* scroll Instagram). And it sounds idyllic but also I’m interrupted every 2.3 minutes to bring someone a towel or their goggles or their shoes (because there’s always at least one kid refusing to wear shoes). 

We literally have nowhere to be. Except exactly right where we are. And, most days, that feels more freeing than I ever would have expected.

A Place to Fail

I recently went through a week where I made a new-to-me recipe every single night. I didn’t realize I’d done this in my meal plan until about Wednesday, when I noticed I was continually looking at my phone for reference, as opposed to all the recipes that have become standard in my rotation over the years which I’ve memorized and adapted. 

It could have been a case of my subconscious telling me, via meal plan, that it was sick of our days all looking so very much the same. Or maybe all the foodie people I follow on Instagram posted especially good recipes that week. It was probably just a fluke. I don’t know. I guess I needed something different in the routine of the day. I cooked my way through a Thai chicken curry and a simple Mexican chicken and rice skillet and a black bean soup which we ate with a generous amount of tortilla chips. (The kids preferred the tortilla chips solo.) 

It occurred to me while making one of these meals how easy this came to me. I like cooking. I regularly pour over books about food, follow a ridiculous amount of those aforementioned food-related accounts on Instagram, tend to enjoy meal planning, and spend a good amount of time each day thinking about food. I’ve made dinner almost every night of the week since my husband and I were newlyweds. Then, it was because we didn’t have much money for eating out. Most nights I found a way to turn chicken breasts and onions and bell peppers into stir fries or fajitas or rice bowls or pasta.

Fridays were, and still are, the exception. I almost always take a day off each week. “I don’t think I’ve ever cooked on a Friday night,” I heard my grandma say once when she was well into her 80s. That sounded to me like a pretty good #lifegoal. Before we had children, or really before we had our third and were outnumbered by children, we used to go out on Friday nights. 

When our twins were born, they followed us along to Friday night dinners. We ate at 4:30 or 5:00, in near-empty restaurants, before we needed to be home for the bedtime chaos to begin. We’d request a booth and they’d rest next to us in their carseats. As they grew older they sat with us — their tiny-for-their-age bodies swallowed by cavernous high chairs, held up by the blankets we brought with to stuff around them. I’d order grilled chicken and broccoli, which we chopped up small, and they ate by the tiny fistful.

Now we don’t usually eat out on Fridays. Instead, we order takeout after the kids are in bed. (At home date nights: highly recommended. Mostly because you can eat Thai food in your sweatpants and have no need for mascara.)

The point being that Friday nights aside, the vast majority of evenings find me in the kitchen.

Read the rest about finding a safe space to fail over on the Twin Cities Mom Collective.

A Couple of Cocktails

If there’s a Moscow Mule on the menu, I order it. Every time.

I didn’t know that’s what it was the first time I was introduced to them. It wasn’t mine; I didn’t drink it. I don’t think I was even 21. Tyson and I were out with one of his friends, a grad student a few years older than us.

“This is my favorite drink,” Ramon told us before continuing, with his signature chuckle, “They only serve it in a copper mug if you know to ask for it! They’ve had too many stolen but if I ask for one, they give it to me.” (College towns, amiright? *facepalm*)

I completely forgot about that night until several years later when Tyson and I were out to dinner. I spied the description of a drink on the menu that included ginger beer, limes, and vodka, which happen to be some of my favorite things. And then I read that it was served in a copper mug which jogged my memory and cemented my need to order the drink Ramon had raved about. It was love at first sip.

Margaritas and I have a longer, more specific history. My group of interior design friends claimed the Mexican chain in our college town that served up halfway decent Tex-Mex and (more importantly) large margaritas as our own. Carlos O’Kelly’s, that strange Spanish-Irish combo of a name, became a staple of our time there. It began as a reward after we completed a huge project, after enduring several all-nighters topped off with scathing design critiques of everything we’d just poured our blood, sweat, and tears into. But it didn’t take long before margaritas became a weekly event. We could usually be found in a booth on Thursdays right after class, an early dinner that was more liquid than solid because we didn’t have class on Fridays.

Pomegranate was my go-to flavor. Laura and Tiffany ordered strawberry. Jenni was classier than the rest of us and ordered hers on the rocks. Chad ordered whatever he felt like that day. The five of us huddled in a booth and ate baskets and baskets of the free chips and bowls upon bowls of salsa as we drank our way through the early evening.

It was our thing. So much so that this group of friends gifted us a complete margarita set for our wedding: a bottle each of Patron and Triple Sec, margarita glasses and a special contraption to salt the rims, Kosher salt and a single lime, which I found a couple of weeks later while unpacking after our honeymoon, gone to mold and mush amongst boxes of new plates and sets of towels.

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I’m not a person who makes cocktails. Tyson doesn’t drink, so usually, it’s just me. I don’t have a well-stocked bar cart or much of a liquor cabinet. I don’t own a cocktail shaker. If it requires me to mix together eight different ingredients, boil some lavender simple syrup, or garnish with basically anything, it’s not happening in my house.

Don’t get me wrong: I love all of those things. I can’t wait to go out and sip a fancy cocktail again. I want to drink something garnished with fresh herbs, mixed with bitters, and with a bottle of liquor that’s been purchased specifically for that drink and that drink alone.

At home, though, it’s enough to get dinner on the table in the evening. Need I bother to say this is true now more than ever? Need I bother to say we all might need something fun to sip now more than ever? I don’t have time to putz. Without much else to excite us lately, I’ve been looking forward to cocktail hour. While it’s not like that booth at Carlos O’Kelly’s some twelve years ago now, a simple margarita reminds me of that time. These drinks remind me of the gift of simplicity. And they remind me to look forward to the day I’ll be mixing up entire pitchers of cocktails again.

I read this article just yesterday, when this post was all but finished. 

“Things have changed. Some of these things are obvious and collective — pandemic, mass unemployment, a reckoning with racial injustice. Others are more personal. But the crux of it is this: Like many of you, I am exhausted. Fussiness in any form, especially about drinking, feels antithetical to this moment in life. This is not to say that drinks cannot be “political”…But at the moment, I’m not looking for an education on the trivia and minutiae of booze every time I pop open a bottle. I just need a drink.”

This feels right. It’s everything I’ve been feeling lately. Life is enough right now. Let’s keep simple what we can. Pop open a bottle. Enjoy the sunshine, the blue sky, the sweat beading on your forehead, the breeze on the patio. And just have a drink.

This post was written as part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to read the next post in this series "The Story of a Recipe".

(A note that a Google search for these cocktails will yield approximately 4.79 bajillion results. Recipes out there are going to be similar to mine, if not identical. Just a note to say that this is what mine have evolved to over the past several years and the variations are seemingly infinite.)

Simple Margarita
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My margarita has evolved to be more like my friend Jenni’s: on the rocks, salted rim, not so sweet. The recipe the way I’ve written it is for a pitcherful since that’s usually how I serve them. It’s basic—note that it’s equal parts each liquid—so it’s easy to scale down the recipe if you’re only making a cocktail or two. Depending on the size of your glass, a double shot (2 oz.) of each liquid (including the water) is a good starting point for a single cocktail.

INGREDIENTS

• 2 cups tequila

• 2 cups orange liquor, such as Triple Sec

• 2 cups lime juice, such as Rose’s lime juice, or squeezed fresh from about 6-8 limes

• 2 cups filtered water

• ice

• 1 lime, sliced

• Kosher salt or sugar for the rim, if desired

INSTRUCTIONS

• Mix tequila, orange liquor, lime juice, and water together in a large pitcher. Chill in the refrigerator for at least an hour.

• When ready to serve, take a lime wedge and run it around the rim of your glass. Pour salt or sugar onto a flat plate or cutting board; then dip the glass in. Wiggle it around until the rim is coated. Fill glass halfway with ice. Pour in your pre-mixed margarita. Best enjoyed on a patio with plenty of chips, salsa, queso, and friends.

Moscow Mule
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Is this the best cocktail of all time? Because I’m pretty sure it’s the best cocktail of all time.

INGREDIENTS

• 6 oz. ginger beer

• 2 oz. vodka

• half a lime

• ice

INSTRUCTIONS

• Fill copper mug 1/2-3/4 full with ice. (Is a copper mug required? That’s like asking if the Pope is Catholic. You technically don’t need a copper mug. But I wouldn’t drink it any other way.)

• Pour in ginger beer and vodka. Squeeze juice from lime and throw the rest of the lime half in there, too. Stir around. Sip. Smile. Your day just got better.

NOTES

• I like ginger beers that are more spicy than sweet. A couple favorites are Q Mixers Ginger Beer and Fever Tree.

• If I have lime juice I add a splash to my Moscow Mule, in addition to the juice from the lime itself.

• Sub whiskey for a Kentucky mule or tequila for a Mexican mule.

• But seriously you should get yourself some copper mugs.

Read, Watched, Listened

I love reading just about everything (okay, you won't see any mystery or sci-fi picks on here), watching things that make me think and especially if they make me laugh, and wholeheartedly embrace the podcast. I also enjoy hearing about what other people are reading, watching, and listening. Here's my two cents worth.

READ
Hourglass: Time, Memory, Marriage
Some books I enjoy in the moment and then can’t recall much about them later. That’s this book. Sorry, Dani Shapiro. I remember it being lovely and well-written and honest but I’ve been sitting here for several minutes and literally cannot recall any details. Though maybe that’s not surprising given the state of **gestures** everything. FWIW, I apparently gave it 4 stars on Goodreads.

Miracles and Other Reasonable Things: A Story of Unlearning and Relearning God
I adore Sarah Bessey and this book did not disappoint. She writes memoir just as well as she writes about faith. I’m always nervous when a person I adore releases a new book and there’s a lot of hype around it because what if I don’t love it? What if the hype doesn’t match up? Well, this book did not disappoint. So many crazy stories woven together. (Her time in Rome just blew my mind.) Thank God there is a Sarah Bessey in the world.

March Sisters: On Life, Death, and Little Women
If you’re obsessed with Little Women, as I have been since elementary school, this book of essays on each sister is a must-read. I unfortunately have to agree with most of the reviews that the essays on Meg, Jo, and Beth are far better than the one on Amy. It’s extra unfortunate, as Amy has always been my favorite. (I know. I didn’t know there was such a general loathing of her until the movie came out and I read all the think pieces.) Still. This book was an absolute delight. Maybe I need to write my own Amy essay?

We Have Always Been Here: A Queer Muslim Memoir
I give the first half of this book, primarily of her time in Pakistan, 5 stars. The second half maybe 3 stars. So I compromised in the middle and left it with a 4. The first part felt more complete and powerful, the second half felt like a lot of “and then this happened.” But. It’s important to immerse ourselves in other narratives and this memoir of a queer Muslim woman and immigrant is an important read.

Coming Clean: A Story of Faith
Meh. Didn’t love it. (P.s. I feel like an absolute monster when I say this. I’m so sorry. I know how much hard work went into writing and publishing this.)

Fierce, Free, and Full of Fire: The Guide to Being Glorious You
I got this as a library hold and wasn’t even halfway through before I ordered my own copy. I need to go back and underline ALL THE THINGS. I was even more nervous for Jen Hatmaker’s book than I was for Sarah Bessey’s. Because: Jen, why are you on the cover? I definitely judge books by the cover and this looked a little too cult self-help-y. Rest assured that it is ANYTHING BUT. Jen brings it in this book and my own hardcover copy will soon be covered in underlines and circles. She’s funny and fierce and full of truth.

Wow, No Thank You
Another meh. I wasn’t familiar with Samantha Irby until I started seeing this book of essays all over. It was fine. I really enjoyed a handful of essays but others I struggled through. I appreciate her honesty and vulnerability but her writing overall didn’t do it for me. Her humor is in the same category as Jenny Lawson, and honestly, I feel like it’s often too gross and try-hard. I’ll note that I’ve since seen some of Samantha’s writing around the internet and have enjoyed it, so take that for what it’s worth.

White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism
I had this on my library holds and it came up within just a couple of weeks after George Floyd’s murder, so: perfect timing, I guess? This is very accessible and well-written. I was familiar with many of these concepts before reading because of people I follow on Instagram (notably Rachel Cargle, Layla F. Saad, and Austin Channing Brown). This was a good brush-up and deep-dive into issues of race.

Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?: A Psychologist Explains the Development of Racial Identity
I so enjoyed the writing of this one. This one gave more of a deep dive into the psychology of understanding race, growing up as a POC, and detailed the experiences of different racial groups in the United States—a piece I found particularly helpful. I found it fascinating and easy to read, given the difficulty of the subject matter. There’s a reason this one appears time and time again on books to help with anti-racism.

Know My Name
Chanel Miller wins everything as far as I’m concerned. This book was brave and unflinching and heartbreaking and just so. well. written. Another one that, despite the difficult subject matter, I could not put down. Brock Turner made two big mistakes that January night: 1. Choosing to touch any girl at all without consent and 2. Choosing the one who can WRITE and has ensured his name will go down in history as synonymous with campus rape culture.

Of Mice and Men
This was my first Steinbeck read ever. The only way to sum this up is to say that a novel doesn’t have to be long to be powerful.

RE-READS: Where’d You Go, Bernadette , Anywhere But Here, A Man Called Ove
I needed some things to read (especially before bed) that were less…weighty. These are three that are all very different but that I adore and can read over and over and over again.

WATCHED
Top Chef
We love Top Chef. Everything about it. It’s the best.

Hamilton
(I’m having trouble linking it for some reason but by now, unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know it’s on Disney+.) We watched it three times the weekend it released. I’m not sorry. The first thing we’re going to do once this is all over is fly to NYC and see it on Broadway.

The Last Dance
I like sports in general. I love the excitement and the cheering and the passion and the raw talent. I don’t love watching actual sports themselves. Some of them are fine. Others get boring. (* cough * football * cough *) But I LOVE sports documentaries. Give me the backstories of every Olympian, every time. (* sobs at the postponement of this summer’s Olympic games *) Anyway, maybe we’re just desperate for any sports of any sort at all, but this chronicling of Michael Jordan’s career and the culmination of that final Chicago Bulls season was excellent. Also the music. Brought me right back to elementary school, where the ultimate symbol of coolness was a Chicago Bulls Starter jacket. Please tell me you remember those days.

Douglas
An excellent follow-up to Nanette. The first 10-15 minutes or so where she sets everything up : the best. I love Hannah Gadsby.

LISTENED
The Ezra Klein Show
I don’t listen to this regularly, though I adore Vox and Ezra in particular. This conversation with Ta-Nehisi Coates is worth listening to more than once. And it’s actually hopeful! Something we could all use more of right now.

Good One
I’ve only listened to a couple of episodes to this podcast about jokes so far (thanks for the recommendation, Molly!). I can highly recommend this episode with Hasan Minhaj to you, about how he structured his segment in response to the murder of George Floyd. It’s an excellent listen—both Hassan’s spot (which they air in its entirety during the podcast), and the analysis.

Hallowed Ground

This reflection on visiting the George Floyd memorial in Minneapolis was written at the request of my pastor and distributed to our church this week. It feels fitting to share it here as well.

I’ve started and stopped writing this a handful of times. There isn’t a way to gloss over, to tie up with a bow, this simple truth: we brought our children to the scene of a Black man’s murder. I mulled over my reasons but the pull to bring them wouldn’t leave me alone. It felt important. I felt the weight of it down to my bones. Surely that was reason enough.

Of course, it wasn’t the scene of any murder, but that of George Floyd’s. (Say his name.) The man whose death at the hands of Minneapolis police kicked off protests around the globe.

There was a hush over the intersection of 38th and Chicago the morning we visited. The sun was bright and glaring over the lifeless bodies of flowers (so many flowers), long since dried.  Everyone was masked as they milled around the memorials: candles, signs, graffiti. The intersection felt more holy than church. “This feels sacred,” Tyson said as we drove, still a few blocks away. I nodded. It was what I was feeling myself. This was hallowed ground. 

The kids carried homemade signs. “Remember George Floyd” said Brooklyn’s. “Honor! George! Floyd!” read Caden’s. (The exclamation points, he informed me, were important.)

“I’m so glad they brought their signs,” an older woman said to me, nodding to the kids as we passed her on the sidewalk as she took slow, shuffling footsteps.

“I thought it was important,” I told her. I smiled underneath my mask before remembering she couldn’t see. She and her companions continued to make their way slowly up the road. The pull to the intersection was magnetic.

We’d dropped off a load of donations on the way, to a Baptist church on the outskirts of downtown. It was the third time we’d done this, so at least that part seemed routine.

Outside of Cup Foods, however, was anything but routine. The kids took everything in with big eyes. We’d briefed them, as much as we could, about why we were here, who George Floyd was, why we were paying our respects. They also acted as you might expect from two six-year-olds and a four-year-old. They whined. Said they were bored. Asked to go home. Said they were hungry. The usual.

“Why’d he die?” Nolan asked loudly, so loudly, as he sat on top of Tyson’s shoulders looking where George Floyd’s body had lain, which someone had outlined on the ground in white. I winced and hoped no one minded; we’d explained several times. Then again, it’s hard to take in, even for someone who’s much, much older than four. Why did he die, anyway? It’s unfathomable. Also: all too familiar.

Anne Lamott writes of bringing her young son Sam to see a friend’s baby who died at five months old. She says, “I couldn’t explain why I thought it was right, except that I was taught to be terrified of sickness and death...and I believe this greatly compromised my life. Of course I want better for Sam.”

I think that feeling, deep in our bones, of feeling something is right, of the weight of its importance, of feeling the sacredness and holiness of a thing, is enough. Some might call this deep down gut-level nudge the Spirit herself.

Of course we want better for our children. That’s why we were there that morning, so we could show them how the worst in this world goes hand-in-hand with the best, like the outpouring of love we saw in a donated box of diapers, a pile of flowers, the childish handwriting on posterboard of the name of a man who should have never, ever died. Not like that.

If they ever ask, maybe, someday, about 2020, if they ask, “What did we do?”, I can show them photos and tell them, “Look, we were there.” Because we wanted more and better for our world. I can tell them how we showed up and bore witness to the pain. I can tell them that we voted, that we protested, that we donated, that we read books and processed our privilege, both on our own and with them, and that we did what we could to work towards social justice. Because the Spirit told us to. Because we felt it in our bones. Because it’s just that important.