Of goat meat

Some days are so routine, you could probably get through them without ever even opening your eyes. You know what’s coming, you know how you’ll react when it does, and nothing unexpected musters the energy to crop up and surprise you.

Today isn’t that day for me. For starters, it’s only Gabe’s second day of school, so we’re still finding our way into a routine accommodating that. Then there was the pitiful way he’d managed, last night, to convince Eric to get up and make him pancakes for breakfast this morning – unusual for a weekday, when he normally forages for his own food and resents our efforts to so much as suggest alternatives. So there was pancake making today, which was delicious but not only took over the kitchen, but also used up the last of my milk. No coffee for me.

But then some good surprises came, in the form of many new and unfamiliar kinds of squash at the farmers’ market (squash is quickly becoming my favorite vegetable)…and goat meat. Never cooked with it before, but, as I told the lady selling it, I am all about the new.

The unexpected is often very nice, so long as it’s something that fits into what we can handle and incorporate into our lives. Sometimes, though, there are those moments of stark shock, a time when we find ourselves stopped in our tracks, unable to so much as blink, let alone incorporate what we’re seeing or experiencing into our thoughts and reactions.

Eight years ago today, I didn’t expect routine to come easy. I had a three-month-old, and “the usual” wasn’t quite something I could take for granted yet. If I was expecting anything, it was to be a quiet morning with floor time and toys, followed by a short outing to see the new library, opened after renovations just that morning. Instead, tiny Sam surprised me by falling asleep on the floor all by himself, with no nursing or fussing or rocking…and that was because I was too busy being stopped in my tracks, rocked to my own core, to even notice until after it had happened. I was too busy watching planes crash and buildings fall.

The unexpected can be extreme. My goat meat discovery feels ridiculously minor, like a toddler “discovering” the grass in his front yard, having learned how the world could be changed by flipping on a television and finding that “The Today Show” would be somewhat different on a particular September morning. Some days are better boring, better without certain kinds of education.

My sons won’t know a world without Patriot Day. For them, it’ll be like other memorial holidays are to my generation: worthy of note, worthy of solemnity, but not filled with the stark ache that those of us who remember that day will feel, possibly until we pass from this world. Gabe’s class wore red today. He has no idea why. Sam heard me talking about it and knew what I was talking about, sort of, and they’ll likely discuss some of it in school as well, but he won’t “get it.” I don’t know whether to be relieved or worried about that.

May my boys’ lives have a lot more surprise squash than the other kind of surprise. That’s an obvious wish, but it’s the one on my heart today. Many of us may be wiser people for having had our hearts shaken by that day, but some wisdom is too heavy.