Looking for the Goodwill Truck
Dear Friends,
I don’t engage in the religious aspects of Christmas, but this week I enjoyed reading a friend’s reflections on the Advent season, namely that it is a season of waiting. Waiting isn’t often glorified in our culture, so pausing to acknowledge and celebrate a time of waiting feels a bit subversive.
We may find it difficult, but, in truth, the time you spend waiting is also your life.
Right now, we’re waiting for the big holidays, the time when we’ll next celebrate with family or friends, perhaps a stretch of time off work. Children are waiting for the day when they get to open gifts. The unknown behind the wrapping paper buzzes with possibility.
Even when it’s not the holidays, we’re waiting. Waiting for the day we’ll have enough saved to do the big thing: to buy the condo, to take the trip. Waiting for the job offer. Waiting for the right moment to take the next step with a partner. Waiting for the promotion. Waiting for the weekend.
We set our sights on these big joys. And sometimes they’re marvelous! They feel exactly like we hoped they would! But tap back into that feeling of being a small child opening a gift. You’re absolutely sure it’s going to be the toy you circled in the catalog (or, in my case, the one you saw at a store and TOLD NO ONE you wanted, because Santa would know your thoughts, right?). And then you open it, and it’s a scratchy sweater.
We hang our hopes too much on big joys, and then things don’t go as planned, and we’re disappointed. I’m not saying we can or should stop doing this. Anticipation is also one of the true joys of being human. But I’ve found that I also need to pay attention to the small joys, and factor those into the narratives I shape about my experiences.
How was my Thanksgiving? Well, it wasn’t nearly as quiet as I’d hoped. My daughter spent literal days crying because turning three is very hard on the human brain.
I’d envisioned getting to curl up on my in-laws’ porch and gaze at the mountains while reading my book for book club, and instead I was so exhausted from toddler parenting that I reverted to newborn-parent status: sleep when the baby sleeps. I guess sometimes it’s not the self care you want, but the self care you need.
The weather was too cold to go on a hike, something I really wanted to do. My cornbread dressing didn’t turn out like I’d hoped, and no one ate it but me. We made the mistake of waiting to drive home until the Sunday after Thanksgiving, and spent nine hours in heavy traffic. With a child who hates the straps on her carseat. (Has she mentioned? These straps. These STRAPS MAMA TAKE THEM OFF.)
This is the story I could tell myself about our week in the mountains. Disappointment, exhaustion, minor failures.
But, to be honest, I actually expected all of these things to happen, or something like them. It doesn’t matter how much you love your family, being away from home and your routine is hard. Cooking in someone else’s kitchen is hard. Toddlers are hard.
So instead, I tried this past week to be ready for small joys, and to take note when they happened.
The first day of our visit, my mother-in-law mentioned that she was trying to get rid of some things she’d been hauling around in the back of her car, and that she needed to go to Goodwill in the next town over, but hadn’t made it there yet. As we were driving to the dog groomer’s, I spotted a big Goodwill truck in a parking lot–AND an employee there taking donations.
My mother-in-law’s face was radiant.
“It’s RIGHT HERE! And it’s OPEN!”
We greeted the Goodwill guy, emptied the trunk, and congratulated ourselves on our good fortune.
The rest of the week, when small moments of joy occurred, I thought: I’m just out here looking for the Goodwill truck.
There was a lovely morning spent having breakfast with my mother-in-law, and in the afternoon, meeting her new neighbors and their standard poodle, whom my child declared looked “like a camel.”
There was the day spent eating and shopping with my brother-in-law and his friend Morgan, who entertained us with stories about her former life as a baker, and how she (unknowingly in the moment!) baked Barack Obama’s birthday cake.
There was the moment my daughter and her cousin, who had been squabbling in the yard seconds before, stopped in their tracks when the air conditioning fan cut on, grabbed leftover birthday balloons, and tossed them into the air current.
Joy: their squeals of glee as the balloons soared as high as the roof.
Joy: sparkling wine on the rooftop of the Asheville Art Museum with my best friend from high school, talking about life’s heaviest moments, then taking a selfie to send to our moms.
Joy: rocking my new niece to sleep, and feeling the moment her tiny body let go of all of its tension and relaxed into my arms.
I feel like I’m always trying to wave some flag of protest like, oh, I’M NOT AN OPTIMIST. BAD STUFF HAPPENS, and IT’S REAL AND IRREDEEMABLE. And maybe this is true. But maybe I need to accept that, at my core, I am an optimist, and I’m always trying to look for the glimmers rather than the storm clouds.
I suppose, though, that being optimistic could just be a study in contrasts. Would my time out of the house have been as joyful if the toddlers hadn’t been acting so wild? Going to a pottery store might not feel like a wonder to my 25-year-old brother-in-law, but entering a beautiful space and not having to tell anyone “don’t touch”? It felt like some kind of otherworldly gift.
Would I have noticed the purity of the balloons if I hadn’t also spent the morning cleaning up potty accidents? I don’t know.
As we re-enter a period of waiting between one holiday and the next, I want to make sure I’m not underestimating small joys while I’m anticipating the big ones. The holidays can be a prescriptive time for memory-making. Some of it is social media, some of it is family expectations, some of it is just capitalism.
In the days ahead, begin shaping your story around small, unexpected joys as well as your bigger plans. Not just an encounter with Santa, but also the joy on your child’s face when the grocery cashier hands her a candy cane. Not just the festive meal with family or friends, but also the simple pleasure of getting out the nice candles just for yourself.
In this time of waiting, we are also living. In this time of waiting, there is also light.
Take good care,
Dot
News & Updates
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Blog Posts
Welcome back to our next installment of “8 Things We Swear By,” this time with Practice Manager & Communications Coordinator Dot Dannenberg. Check out our latest blog for 8 things she can’t stop recommending.
Links We Like
Are we leaning on therapy language and “self care” as an excuse to avoid community? (NYT Gift Link)
Made me laugh–if you’re still in the Thanksgiving mood, here’s how famous artists would plate Thanksgiving dinner.
A podcast I want to dive into.
Mmm, you know we love an article on boundaries.
Why is it so hard for men to make close friends? (NYT Gift Link)
Graphing with whom we spend our time. I don’t love the “cherish every moment” vibe to these graphs, but I did find myself discussing these with multiple people over Thanksgiving. (You need to REALLY like your coworkers, turns out.)
On taking a “sacred pause.”
No helium needed:
