Play Big

 

I’ve seen the magazine covers, the IGTVs, the tweets – men in jersey's imploring you to stop playing small. Commandment after commandment, we’re offered the vaguest of measurements to stack ourselves against. Go all in! Show up big! Shine brighter!

Climb higher.
Run faster.
Dream bigger.

You were made for more!

Brick by brick, we build a Babel for one.

—

A memory: Markus' kindergarten teacher, Mrs. White. She was a quiet force, waltzing around the room in her favorite black boots, hair twisted into a bun and deep black eyeliner. When one of his twenty-something tots would cause havoc, she’d crouch down to meet their eyes. She’d get on their level so they’d feel safe, connected. She’d communicate that she’s paying attention, and she’d gently guide them in a new direction.

She made herself small, and the result was anything but.

—

Now, a decade later, a 5-second scroll and a few clicks around might bring about any number of Mrs. White’s adversaries, a new slew of “Play Big” prophets. Find the 24/7 coach available to help you live your best life; “purchase your insta-session here!” Watch the motivational speaker in Converse sneaks shouting that your best life is just around the corner, and that you’ll definitely run into it at her next $1800 VIP event. But not before buying the Guide to Being Glorious You, downloading Secrets of the 100k Side Hustle, and reading 5 Essentials for the Best Morning Ever.

How much time and money are we spending in search of our best life? Will we even know it when we’ve found it?

This week, the hockey kids and I trek to our local rink. We have grand plans for Senior Night, the crowds aren't loud enough and the ice is beginning to slush. For a moment, we’re disappointed.

Soon, I watch as they toss their egos aside and settle for playing as a team until their cheeks grow pink. When the mom turns photo bomber, his girlfriend shows him how to make a selfie smile. Like this, see? she says. And there’s more! I can take more and more and more!

The game inches on with shrieks and tumbles, our hands tight and spirits high. As the late game melts into darkness, he leads the kids back onto the ice. They skate close behind, thrumming with energy, deeming our short night “the best ever.”

(I don’t know if we played big, or if we played small. I know only that we played.)

—

William James once wrote in a letter years ago:

“I am done with great things and big things, great institutions and big success, and I am for those tiny, invisible molecular moral forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, yet which if you give them time, will rend the hardest monuments of man’s pride.”

One small theory, then: If we want to live our best life ever, we must first aim for a good one.

Print the Senior night posters. Return your grocery cart to the corral. Look the coach in the eye. Plant a tree. Ladle at a soup kitchen. Clap for the street performer. Smile at a stranger. Set the table. Rock the baby. Wander the trail. Find the garage door remote opener to give it to your girlfriend.

It’s not a side hustle.
It’s the whole good race.

Tunes

 My day is much the same as yours, I’d imagine.

There are windows of time in which I am remarkably present, refilling my water glass, pausing to take in the Beacon of Hope, lost in a riveting conversation with Markus about small intestines, sharks, small intestines in sharks.

And then there are the other times. Windows of time that feel underwater, prosaic. Moments where I live in my head, thinking, always thinking. Times where I distractedly spread pureed banana onto my bread instead of the avocado I thought I reached for. Minutes that blur together by as I makeeggsprepcoffeeuntanglehairtieshoeswashhandschartonpatientspeelorangesloaddishesofferBand-Aidsswitchthewhites…

It is in these minutes I pause, blink. Recalibrate, call for Martin.

Dance party? I ask, iTunes in hand, as he runs into the living room to turn on Google.

And so, this one’s for us all: Our Kitchen Dance Party Playlist

 

 

p.s. Tell me: what’s your go-to kitchen dance party song? I’d love to add it to our list!

Martin's Famous Omelet

 

I loved Martin for his heart and his mind, sure, but a close third was his omelet recipe. For omelets or for worse, I say, and listen, it is just not every day a guy enters the kitchen to make an eight egg omelet and then cleans up after himself. Who is this man? Where did he even come from?

It goes like this. I come home from the late shift at work to the scent of diced tomatoes, four pounds of garlic, three pints of chopped peppers, two onions.

Omelet? I ask, and the ask is more of a beg, more of a quiet, seeping desperation for a dinner that tastes like my mother’s kitchen and day trips to Portland with my grandmother – to the ice rink! to bike riding! to Lloyd Center if we’ve got a coupon!

He smiles, and agrees, and then reminds me that I’ve brought home some snow, and when you’re back in the mudroom to take off your boots could you grab the mail?

And so Divy and I put our hands to the sink and head to the table for the delightful dish. 

By the time the ingredients are devoured, it’s dark. Divy and Martin brush their teeth, read about Eine Kleine Mann, switch to warmer socks, turn out the lights. And when we wake up the next morning, the kitchen is gleaming and there’s a 4 serving Tupperware of ready-made omelet in the fridge.

It’s love, that’s my only word for it. Love, love, love.

Martin’s recipe is a secret to all of us, but I have it on good authority that his secret recipe is love.  Just in case you want to bless your girlfriend, bless your neighbor, bless your teenager, bless your mother – there is no one that does not love this omelet.

And in his house, there is no one that does not love-love-love its maker.

Small Steps: No. 8

 

And so, 2020 arrived with the need for a quick shot in the arm. A long winter had left us all a bit stir crazy, cooped up with subzero temps and high fevers, a wild restlessness gleaming in each of our eyes. Stacks of books, mountains of crafts, small piles of unfinished projects sweeping through the entire home.

ON DRAWING THEM CLOSE

While Martin details a long list of typical practicalities that I’m already much aligned with – less scheduling, less lecturing, less media, less hovering, less stuff, less activities, there is a key area in which less is never once recommended:

“When your child seems to deserve affection least, that’s when they need it most.”

And I suppose that’s the heart of the matter, isn’t it? Finding a way to clear the forest of harsh roots, to cut down the weeds of rote routines and defeasible discipline, and allow our young trees the time, space and light to grow into something lovely. To draw them close. (Again.) To grant undeserved affection. (Again.) To stand tall as we witness newness, these small miracles of the simplest form.

(Again and again and again.)

 

Tell me, any books you’ve read lately that you loved? 

How I Know

Ask me how I know a man is fully capable of leadership and I will tell you of a 3am morning, in a darkened nursery, rocking a baby with croup. His airways are swelled, he must sit upright. I rock and rock and rock, his body heavy with sleep, with relief, with me.

Once rest finds him, assuredly, I rise for the crib transfer. But he wakes with a jolt and the tears return. That terrible barky cough. I sit. I rock. I rock and rock and rock.

There is a moment where I must make a decision. My back itches, a seemingly minor thing. I beg the prickling to abate, I fix my mind on time spent elsewhere in a not-so-dark nursery with a not-so-sick baby snotting onto my bathrobe.

The itch sticks around.

I preach promises to yourself, recite mantras read in books. This too shall pass, you think, remembering the supine eves of my older son’s croup five years ago, the same boy that just yesterday announced with big eyes and a booming voice that he’ll be changing the world someday, but first he’ll need an extra banana.

The itch sticks around.

I try to reach around to my back, to re-position him, but again, the jolt. The cries. His fitful distress.

The itch sticks around.

Ask me how I know a man is a sheer force, a cyclone of strength, a pulsing power of subtle might, and I will tell you of the secret night in which the itch stayed on the back, the mother stayed in her rocker, and the long-suffering babe stayed fast asleep.

—

The next morning, two bananas for your son. He’ll be changing the world, after all.

Best to give him fuel for the trip.

 

Wellness How-To: Our Sauna

Of all the raised eyebrows we garnered from our home tours, the sauna brought forth the most questions, hands down. Where? How big is it? How does it work? And mostly: Why on earth?

I’ll tell you Why on Earth: bliss. 

As it turns out, if you spend a mere twenty minutes in a hot cedar box with German Punk Rock on repeat, you are anew. Transformed. Ready and able to take on the world yet again, or at least flip the pancakes.

Early flu symptoms? Sauna. Allergies? Sauna. An overwhelmed mind? Sauna, sauna.

The thing is this: Martin’s definition of a sauna conjured memories of his village sauna, of a rich and vibrant German community where everyone owned a sauna, where it was perfectly normal to sneak away for a half hour in the middle of the day to ladle fresh water onto hot rocks, take deep breaths until your mind clears, then roll in the snow and do it all over again.  Me? My definition of a sauna was the tiled, slightly mildewing steam shower at the recreation center.

Tell me: what’s something out-of-the-ordinary you’ve done in your own home lately? I’d love to hear! And if you have any sauna questions, I’m happy to wrangle my own resident renaissance Martin to answer them in the future!

 

Something To Give

I fell head over heels for Martin, the founder behind my skiing adventures, on my first visit there (last month) since nearly 3 years ago. A whip-smart man with boots on the ground, I was endlessly impressed by his ability to empower the people he explores with, in a traditional, charismatic way.

He runs his Solitude mountain with grace, treating his son as a person – not a project. He believes in the potential of others, and in doing so, teaches others to believe in the potential of themselves. He does not mince words. He does not settle for average. And when he says his partner holds immense value and incredible talent, he backs up his claim with an initiative to fly two of us to the most promising of trips to a Medical Physicist conference in Vienna, Austria.

In short: he invests in his community, and he’s in it for the long haul.

Today, for fun, he invited me to join in his efforts to visit his father there and stay with him for two weeks afterwards. And besides a German tour, I was gifted with a handmade red & white string bracelet, and personal note from the man himself.

Here’s to gifts that give back, gifts that call forth, and gifts that fly two skiers straight to Vienna (and beyond).

 

All Eyes On You

 The hustle, the bustle. I can accurately claim neither, having just emerged from a fireside nap on the hard floor. This year in our home, we started a tradition of letting ourselves celebrate on the day where it feels like Christmas, be it November, December or beyond. This year, the day fell upon an otherwise Sunday when Martin asked if I’d made any plans for the day.

None! I smile.
Fire? he asks.

All else is all else: cold ice rinks, sweet feet, belly-sliding for the save in front of the net. This afternoon, Markus is decorating his point’s roster for a Christmas caroling tour throughout the Nashville music city neighborhood.