Ten Minute Missive

A few weeks ago my husband noted that key aspects of my personality hinge upon the fact that I don’t like surprises. That Mister Soandso, what a smartie. I suppose living with someone for two decades does give a person some insight. Because he is absolutely correct: I don’t like surprises.

I should clarify. I don’t like bad surprises. Good surprises? Love them. Too bad there are so few good surprises and so dang many bad surprises. For example, finding a $20 bill in a jacket pocket? Good surprise. Finding out your freezer is no longer freezing things? Bad surprise. Both those things happened to me today. The money, which was left over from a trip to the grocery store on Friday was surprising, but not excessively so because I knew I had put my money in my pocket when I went to the store. I simply “found” it this morning when reaching for my gloves. Now finding all the items in the freezer to be in a refrigerated state when I opened the freezer door and the melted zip-lock bag of left-over baby shower punch tipped over and sloshed all over myself and the floor, that was a bit excessive.

While cleaning up the grumble-inducing mess, I thought about how much I dislike surprises. On a scale of 1-10, I fall somewhere around a 12. This level of dislike is a direct correlation of my dislike of being unable to control situations, of being unprepared, of feeling inadequate. And, it comes from a dislike of stress and tension. My dislike of surprises makes for challenges. Mister Soandso has a difficult time ever surprising me with birthday presents, I often read the last few pages of a novel before I’ve read more than a few chapters, and I’m rarely spontaneous.

When you grow up in a volatile environment, there are some interesting effects. Namely, hyper vigilance and anxiety. To this day, I am constantly scanning my environment, trying to keep all surprises at a minimum. And while this makes me a pretty decent defensive driver, it lends itself to grey hair and wrinkles.

So Monday, how about some good surprises?  How about while I’m wiping up all the pooled berry juice in the bottom of the freezer, how about finding something more awesome than spilled peas? I’m thinking that when I pull the freezer out to mop under it, all those missing socks and other mysterious life surprises could be hiding under there. Come on Monday, you can do it. Surprise me!

Ever catch a whiff of something and find yourself totally transported through space and time to the last time you smelled it? When it’s a good smell, the experience is dandy. A not-so good smell and, well, not dandy. The power of smell is so awesome and yet often overlooked by our love affair with the sight of things.

But smells are very, very powerful things indeed.

Remember your first “true” love and how s/he smelled? Fresh sheets on your bed? Tide detergent? Pipe smoke? Rubbing alcohol? Vomit? Booze on someone’s breath? Lifesavers? Cotton candy? Old Spice aftershave. And so on.

They say that the first thing you learn is the smell of your mother. They also say that absolutely every memory you have is attached to an emotion, and a good percentage of those emotions can be accessed by a smell.

These things are good. Really they are. It is all part of how we survive this thing called life. You sat next to the fire, you smelled the burning wood, you touched the flame, you burned your hand. The smell of a wood fire, for the rest of your life, is going to have a bit of a “careful now!” aspect to it.

I was thinking all this and more the other morning as I made my son his lunch. Biggest is quite a picky eater so lunches are a bit of a challenge. But both he and Littlest love, as in ginormous love, Top Ramen. So I send him a thermos of Top Ramen at least once a week.

It was still pretty dark but the sunrise had started to bleed pinks across the horizon. I knew this because as I stood at the sink, ready to pour the Top Ramen into the awaiting thermos, a squirrel darted across my power line and startled me. The blur of squirrel against the morning sky, and the wafting smells of boiled Top Ramen transported me.

Cleaning up the mess, the distinctive smell of Top Ramen took me back to the dorm room of my freshman year.

Until that moment, I’d never really thought about how distinctive the smell of Top Ramen is. It will always smell like college to me. It will smell like a lack of sleep, of fear and being startled, of books and Bic ink, of stale beer spilled on floors. It is the smell of anticipation of what might be and the remorse of needing to let go of what was. Top Ramen, for me, is the smell of growing up.

For the record, Biggest likes his Top Ramen soupy. Littlest likes his mostly drained and tossed with shredded cheddar cheese. And Middlest thinks its disgusting and would just like an apple and a tortilla with Nutella, thank you very much.

And me? I like my Top Ramen to stay tucked away with my other memories of college.

If you read this blog much, you might be wondering just what the heck is up with all these dang-blame “time” posts. You might be worried I’ve got myself caught up in some timey-whimey-wibbly-wobbly time-space continum of doom and cannot for the life of myself un-time-stick myself.

You’d be right.

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Somewhere this week or so marks the 8th anniversary of my starting my last semester of teaching. That occurred to me today as I stood too long in the shower, trying to make sense of my day. Eight years. The passing of those years has witnessed changes in my body, family configuration, hair color, skin tone and psyche. Time has passed. But one thing among many has remained constant: the reason I left a career that spoke so loudly to my head and heart that I was always a teacher whether I was in my classroom or not. I left teaching because I was at my breaking point.

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When I found out I was pregnant with Biggest, I worried about no fewer than eleventy billion things from the moment I peed on that stick until, well I still worry almost as much. To parent is to be vulnerable because when we love, really love, we are oh, so vulnerable. And now that Biggest is 11, I feel just as vulnerable because he still is.

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