One Minute More

Paying close attention to the present as it rattles all the bones. Nick Flynn's perfection. Buddhism-y quotes about time and tenderness.

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We started this routine a few weeks back, where we write a quote on this dry-erase board we’ve had hanging on the fridge. It originally started as a menu or a chore board, but our kid-friendly menus aren’t all that exciting (”buttered noodles or chicken nuggets with fruit”) and everyone sucks at chores, so we began mixing it up with an affirmation or an inspirational quote.

Julieanne originated it, but I’ve become fairly obsessive about it since I’ve now found another use for my daily readings besides these Sunday entries and — you know — lumbering along this spiritual path to gain some sense of happiness that’s not reliant on money and shit.

Here was the fridge message I used on Thursday:

“The only way to live is by accepting each minute as an unrepeatable miracle.” — Storm Jameson.

I took that quote from The Art of Forgiveness, Lovingkindness, and Peace by Jack Kornfield, which I’ve used a zillion times as a daily reader. That quote from Jameson was an inevitable fridge-add this week, since I spend so many hours swimming in nostalgia, obsessing over the passage of time. (Longtime readers of this newsletter know this is a frequent topic.)

This week, I got walloped by it because I swear I watched our oldest child zap from baby to teenager and back again. He is 8, but many days, he wishes he were still younger and smaller, wanting to be carried and coddled. Some days — some exhausting days — he’ll scream about how strict we are because we don’t let him have a phone and how he wants a brand-new family. One of us reaches a breaking point and says something that never fixes anything, but we are both at a loss for any other way to make the hurt go away. Just classic Adult Child aftershocks.