“…I’m learning how to eat the fruit that is in season…”
Ben Rector “Living My Best Life”
The car smelled like only a sweaty, teenaged football player can after a game. A little grass mixed with a little well-worn gear mixed with a lot of sweat. Eye black was smeared and running down his face, he was chugging a Gatorade, and talking nonstop. In my front seat.
Unexpectedly.
We’ve been in a season of change. Both kids have been trying new, time-intensive activities at school. The stinky one in my vehicle started high school. And we’ve made some shifts in schedules between households. Between the busyness, all the newness, and the schedule, the fall was a lot of fun, it flew by quickly, and it left me with a twinge of sadness at how little “real” time I get with my people these days.
As much fun as it all was, week after week I arrived at the weekends realizing I’d not had a real conversation with either child.
Discussions about homework? Good grief yes.
Instructions about what to pack and how to prep for a long day or week ahead? Constantly.
Emails about what they’ve forgotten between households or “just found out, mom” that they need for school? I’ve got an inbox a mile long.
But uninterrupted, relaxed time with margin to chat, or watch a movie, or just be quiet and unhurried in the same space? That sort of time was, and still is, in short supply.
And it wasn’t totally a surprise. With one starting high school, I’ve been warned – repeatedly – about just how fast time was going to fly. Busy lives filled with activities, friends, and an increased workload at school would all make life a different degree of fast-paced.
So, when an unexpected issue led to the players riding home with their parents instead of the team bus, I was giddy to be gifted over an hour in the car with my favorite boy. He’d had a great game – which is no small feat given he’s brand new to the sport and playing time reflected his lack of experience. But he’d played more than any game prior, and the team won, ending an undefeated season.
He was on cloud nine. And so was his mom.
We chatted, or really I listened as he rattled on, about the game, a great catch, a first down, and how much fun the season had been. He inhaled a second dinner as we swung through a drive-thru and then a hot fudge sundae following a spontaneous second stop at DQ. He took over the music and was the DJ, sharing his favorites and a preview of an upcoming chorus concert. It was a wonderful, albeit smelly, ride home that left me delighted. And as I fell asleep that night, I wondered how often I blow through sweet, day-day-day moments focused on to-do lists and logistics, rather than seeing the opportunities that land in my lap.
That’s the thing about this particular stage in life. The moments we spend together are no longer lazy mornings snuggled on the sofa watching cartoons while we wait on someone – I mean me – to make chocolate chip pancakes. Our quality time together rarely feels intentional. But what I started to notice that night is that even in this season – this busy, they are growing too fast, oh gosh in a few years they are leaving season – there is good to be savored. Even when it looks different.
I think if we’re not careful our humaneness can fool us into thinking whatever we are living right now is permanent. We can convince ourselves that what was good in the past is what must be replicated to be good in our current season. But that doesn’t work.
Life, it turns out, is a series of seasons. And there’s a lot of change as we transition from one season to another. One day the little guy is obsessed with counting his Matchbox car collection, and the next reminding you to buy him shaving cream. You get used to the sweet girl padding down the hallway in footie pajamas half-asleep every morning, and you blink and she’s coming to your kitchen table fully dressed for school focused on studying “just a little bit more” for her science test.
Ben Rector has been a favorite for a while now. His latest album “The Joy of Music,” may be, in my opinion, his best to date. The truth of real-life living spoken in the lyrics are just so very good. Songs about everydayness and about his new season of parenting have been on repeat in my living room, car, and office for months.
Living My Best Life talks about the strange things we start to and care about as we enter new stages of life. And one of those things is savoring what’s happening right now. A line that stopped me in my tracks recently is “…I’m learning how to eat the fruit that is in season…”
Gosh, there’s a lot of wisdom there. Just like we see in nature, different seasons produce different fruit. And we all know what it is like to taste fruit that, while it looks ok, just doesn’t taste quite as good because it isn’t in season. It turns out that was is true for apples and blueberries is also true for people.
What bears fruit for us in one season will be dormant in another. Our fruit will come from different corners as we move through a lifetime. And while each fruit is different, and while some of it is born during difficult, heartbreaking circumstances, it can be savored. Even when we are in a winter season, we have hope that another shift will be around the corner bringing with it something different, or new, but satisfying.
Let’s keep an eye out for the good fruit that can sustain us in the present. Not from seasons past, trying to replicate something we or our people have outgrown, and not from the season on the horizon but not in our grasp just yet. Let’s look for what we are being given right now, examine it, and see that it, too, can be savored as good.
