I turned 34 on Sunday. Not a particularly noteworthy number and certainly an odd time to be celebrating a birthday (or anything at all really). Zoom parties and physically-distanced gatherings are how it’s done these days, and my sweet family and friends near and far showered me with love in all the ways they could.

I did my best to show them all my love and appreciation but it never felt like enough. I wanted to hug my mom, take a walk with my dad, bake cookies with my sister, share a glass of wine with my brother-in-law, and play with my nephew. I wanted to shower everyone with all of my love (with no virus holding us back). And I certainly didn’t want any of the sadness or loneliness I — like so many of us! — have experienced during this time to be misinterpreted as ungrateful. I didn’t want to disappoint anyone by not being 100% joyful.

So, I held it at bay — sharing just a bit of how I was feeling with James that afternoon while we lay out and read in a park. But by the end of the day, when it was just the two of us getting ready for bed and trying to settle in for our night’s rest, I crumbled. More accurately, I went under. It felt like I’d been treading water all day without even realizing it and then a wave of grief hit me, and I was too exhausted to fight it. It pulled me under, and I was lost in my own fears.

This kind of fear and grief is disorienting — it’s hard to know which way is up — much like the time my dad (before he was a dad) was windsurfing and fell off his board. He got trapped under it and was fighting to find his way out. Thank God he did. Not long after that, my mom told him she was pregnant (yep, with me!), and he either sawed his board in half and threw it away or sold it — the ending is up for debate in family lore, but that’s another story all together.

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I’m perched on a large planter box in the middle of our patio, knees drawn up to my chest, bare feet on the cement, as I catch up with one of my dearest friends. She’s telling me about how it’s going with her — the relentlessness of just keeping her littles alive and keeping the house running — and I’m nodding along, every word resonating. She explains that she’s constantly wavering between feeling like mothering is enough  on its own and feeling like she should be doing more. As she continues to list the things she feels like she should be doing, I say with a laugh, “You’re should-ing all over yourself.” 

I laugh because I do this too. While I’m not a mother, I have my own “shoulds” (and “should nots”) that drift across my mind just when I’m feeling okay about things. I should be writing more, I should not have had that extra cookie, I should have more to show for this time. Sometimes, though, I realize I simply should be kinder to myself.

That’s where I am today. Maybe I’ll have more of a case of the should’s tomorrow, but for now I’m feeling strangely content. Contentment is not our normal — at least, not the normal I hear from friends or see on social most of the time. More often than not, we’re longing for “more,” which, actually, can be good. As C.S. Lewis puts it in Mere Christianity, “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”

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