In Defense of the Boring Days
Happy July! This month, I’m taking a creative rest, and so I scheduled this post for you ahead of time. If I’m not as quick to respond to comments or messages as usual, that’s why. But please know that I love to hear from you, and I will respond at one point or another!
There are so many days that go by when it seems like there’s nothing to note. And oh, what an immense privilege.
A few nights ago, I said something I shouldn’t have.
My husband and I had just put the kids to bed, and we were doing our nightly routine of scraping plates, soaking pans, folding laundry, and sweeping kinetic sand into the trash. As I tried to dislodge a piece of avocado from a crack in the table, I looked up and around and said in a tiny voice, “Sometimes I feel a little bored.”
(I confess this now with hands over my eyes, peeking out to make sure I haven’t summoned something terrible upon myself by admitting this.)
See, what I had on my mind was the repetition—the predictability of the mess, the duties, the million adult tasks that seemed to fill our margins. At one time—and it feels like a very long time ago indeed—our weeknights were splattered with all manner of interesting people, food, and play. We hosted dinner pa
rties on Tuesdays, sipped champagne on Wednesdays! We had bonfires and stared at stars. We inhaled the exotic aroma of tiki torches and stayed up late to solve the world’s pressing issues.
Now, most nights look like putting the house back in order so we can enjoy an hour of uncluttered bliss before we go to bed, wake up, and mess it up all over again. It all feels very—predictable.
Yet even as I said the words I wished I could take them back.
A couple of years ago, when my mother-in-law got the news that she had cancer, we spent months traveling up and down the state to be with her—with two babies and a dog in tow. It was a heartbreaking, confusing time. While other people went on with their regular lives, doing normal things like hunting for ripe avocados in the produce aisle and drinking gas station coffee on their way to work, we stumbled into the twilight zone. Time ceased to have meaning. Plans and routines became a pipe dream. I felt as though we’d fallen through the rabbit hole, and the land was one of sickness and grief where words like hospice, morphine, and surgery were everyday vernacular.
After leaving the hospice house one day, I remember pulling up beside a stranger at a stop light. He was bobbing his head to some silent song, an amused expression on his face. Out on the sidewalk, a couple ambled along with grocery bags in the crooks of their arms. They laughed. I remember coveting their normalcy so deeply that I could feel a physical ache beneath my sternum. I thought, “I would give anything to be having a boring day like them.”
And I go back to that now—the prize of normalcy, of doing ordinary things like putting away laundry on a Wednesday night. Of knowing that our children are each in their respective beds, limbs flung about in full surrender to their slumber. Of walking about the house with two legs that work, and tidying up with bodies and brains that cooperate. There are so many days that go by when it seems like there’s nothing to note. And oh, what an immense privilege.
I’ve known what it’s like to look out at the world and long to rejoin its rhythms, like a prisoner peering through iron bars. So now, as summer wears on and the routines of meal-making and nap battles and laundry duty have begun to feel monotonous, I will redirect my mind to that moment in the car, when I realized that ordinary days are our most underrated bounty.
For every un-noteworthy day that goes by, let’s remember to revel in its sheer boringness. And when we catch ourselves grumbling about our plans, our messes, and our well-worn patterns, let’s stop and glory in the garden-variety instead, knowing full well that our regular old lives are not a given, but rather—a gift.
* This article was first published in my monthly parenting column in The Village in the June 2024 issue.
I long for boring days this summer as we just lost my father in law and have the horrible task ahead of putting his things somewhere else while my demented mother in law lives on without him. Hospice is a gift and watching a body leave this world is also a gift. But I long to do my favorite boring activity of sipping coffee on my porch while reading a book in the afternoon.