Soupy Mac & Cheese
Humor is a powerful force. When we laugh, the energy around us shifts and can totally redirect what might have been a devastating situation into a more lighthearted moment. When hard things are heavy, they tend to stick with us on and within our physical bodies (picture a big black splat of paint thrown at your body). Conversely, when hard things are inserted with love or humor or compassion, our body redirects that black muck and we feel…well… lighter.
So, here’s the story that helped me practice this (and some of you readers might have heard it already, so bare with me). In many ways, I’ve attempted to help my children be slightly more independent these past few weeks. You know, bring more agency and self direction into their little worlds. Some days it goes great, while others it’s a complete train wreck. This one was a train wreck.
Luke was mulling around the kitchen announcing to nobody in particular that he was desperately hungry. With enough back and forth to make anyone crazy, he finally agreed to make himself a box of mac and cheese. One point for me…I’m rocking this parenting thing during quarantine. Welllll, not so fast. The mac and cheese turned into a saucepan of orange water. Oh yes, don’t forget the orange dust all over the stove top from his attempts at opening the cheese packet. So, this quickly derailed and while some pasta was made to look somewhat presentable, the rest was stuck in a bowl, haphazardly by me. I placed the bowl in the fridge and said to myself “I’ll deal with this later.”
Well, here’s the later. While playing basketball outside a few hours later, my daughter screams out the screen door “Mom! The bowl of mac and cheese just mysteriously fell out of the fridge and landed all over the kitchen floor and the bowl broke!!!” Oh, dammit I thought. Yes, she described the scene perfectly. White pasta tubes swimming in a puddle of watery orange glop. Oh, and the bowl was in a million tiny pieces.
Yup, you guessed it. I brought in the power of humor. My initial reaction was a tense body, a laundry list of not so kind words, and a desire to get in my car and drive far far away… forever. But instead, I laughed. I almost high-fived myself and Luke and Harley and I LITERALLY felt an energetic shift in my body. My shoulders dropped and the smile on my face seemed to lighten the whole load. So readers, in this slllllllllooooow time we are given many mini-lessons to help us grow, in love and with love. Good luck out there, and thanks for reading
