I like to think that I’m more of a spontaneous person than I really am. Perhaps it’s that I like the idea of spontaneity more than the spontaneity itself, I’m not sure. When I was younger, I used to imagine myself living a life steeped in spontaneous moments, including whimsical day trips or vacations to places that caught my fancy. And, while I did head off on a few of those, I have discovered that I am more of the sort of person who prefers predictable rhythms and routines. That’s not to say that I need every moment of every day planned out in all its specificity. But I do like having at least a vague sense of what the day likely will involve.
Knowing this about myself, I spend time on the weekends contemplating the coming week and I find myself using my Morning Pages as a place to consider the coming day. Really it’s about ordering my mind more than my day because I recognize my tendency for my thoughts to move in all the directions at any given moment and I have come to realize this scattered approach to my days caused me to miss things that matter to me. My Morning Pages provide me time to breathe deeply and look out at the new day with its new mercies and new opportunities and to build into the day spaces for rest and renewal, for pausing and praying and reconnecting with God, and to create time and space to enjoy my life, specifically, my people.
Interestingly, as I have practiced this morning routine of Morning Pages and prayer and quiet time, I have realized that despite the incongruity of the idea, spontaneity flourishes in these predictable rhythms and routines. It just might look a little differently than a whimsical trip to the beach or a taking in a New York show (things I did in my younger days). Now, the moments are spontaneous joy, delight, laughter, connection. And those provide me a deep sense of gratitude and even purpose. Spending my days alongside my teenagers tends to feed my imagination and wonder and creativity, and these are the very things that feed my heart and soul.
The other morning, as I went about my planned breakfast tasks in the kitchen, I heard one of my girls ask her sister a familiar question, What’s it about? I love that they are curious about and show interest in what they are each reading. One of the things they have always done around the books they read, especially the ones they read at the table while eating, is to share random observations and comments about the story or the characters. Sometimes these observations eventually cause the other girl to ask about the book: What’s it about?
This question tends to launch them into a much deeper and longer conversation. I love listening to each of the girls describe characters and explain the basic idea or plot of the book they’re reading. As anyone who has ever had to write an essay about a book for English class, you know how challenging it can be to boil a complex storyline down to its bare bones basics. I love that they each work through this challenging exercise, trying to encapsulate a several hundred page book into a few sentences. But even more, I love the conversations that tend to develop around the books. Inevitably, the conversation wanders from the story and characters to include the way my girls’ perspectives on life, the world, humanity, you name it.
These are the spontaneous moments I have grown to appreciate more and more in my life. I am one who craves deep and real conversations and small talk and cursory conversations feel exhausting to me. I am the person who wants to steal away to a corner of the room at a party to engage in deep one-on-one conversation in which ideas are exchanged and explored, where people let down their guard or step out from behind their walls and choose to connect more genuinely and authentically. This is what I sense in that simple question from my girls, What’s it about? Perhaps because I see in them that same desire, that same longing to connect in real ways with others.
So, while they bandy this question back and forth regularly and while it mostly pertains to a specific book one of them is reading, I realize there is a wider sense to this question that I find us exploring in many of our more spontaneous conversations that are borne out of our unschooling or meal times. Some of my favorite times with our girls are not the trips to the beach or a museum or some special place for a planned event. Yes, I absolutely love these times. But I am all about the moments when one of my girls asks me a question and we move into that deeply engaged place where we consider ideas and life. To me, this is where life is lived at its best—in the conversations that draw us closer and nurture the relationship we share.
This is actually how I got to know my husband the first time we met. We still revisit that night because of how much it meant to each of us. We were celebrating the wedding of a mutual friend; he’d been invited to play the piano so another mutual friend (my husband’s college roommate) could sing an original song he’d written and wanted my husband to accompany him on. I was a bridesmaid but had since changed out of my formal attire for a simpler outfit at the outside reception. And while this sounds like a Rom-Com story, that’s pretty much where the comparison stops.
Our mutual friend, my husband’s roommate, my husband, and I sat at a small round table on the brick patio with our plates piled with barbeque and buffet sides. We have since dubbed that table the patio table of truth because rather than having simple, polite, and cursory conversation, we dove into some genuinely deep and real conversation when I asked him a pointed, meaningful question about a past relationship that had sent his life into quite a downward spiral. I remember his friend looking at my husband and saying something to the effect of, yeah, tell her about that. As the conversation and the night progressed we talked about some of the hardest moments and biggest challenges our lives had brought us. In other words, we laid bare our hearts and our souls, and the connection we forged during that conversation is what has sustained us in some of our harder married moments. As I like to say, it was a conversation we started at that small patio table of truth but that we continue today (that was almost 26 years ago now).
The memories I have of my life almost always involve some of these kinds of powerful moments. And that’s why I love that I can also share these kinds of conversations and moments with my girls, together and individually. I love that a seemingly simple question like what’s it about can spark the spontaneity I crave but that the spontaneity blossoms from the rhythm of my days. It’s a lovely juxtaposition. And it provides me such a wonderful opportunity to witness the ways these two remarkable young women are becoming invested in meaningful relationships, connections, and exchanges even if they don’t always realize it in those simple moments.
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