In our home, Saturday mornings tend to be more sacred than
Sundays. Regardless of where we are
going on Sunday morning, the time is rushed. There is a calm during worship, but
then the rest of the day is a marathon to finish all the weekend things and the
preparation for the next week things.
Saturdays are different.
Every Friday night, Matt will look at me and say, “I think we should
just sleep until we wake up tomorrow.”
And that is music to my ears. We
are constantly running from one thing to another. Sleeping in is a luxury.
When we do get up, there is a sacred breakfast ritual. Matt will fix us our weekend Nespresso “fancy”
coffee with freshly frothed cream, while I start breakfast preparations. He hands me my coffee in my favorite mug, a
gift from my best friend. And he takes
his favorite New Orleans mug, a gift from his sister, and heads to the computer
room to start addressing the 57 things in his head.
Except he typically gets sidetracked before really getting
started because he needs to pick just the right music to listen to while he
works. And that takes him on a
meandering path of coffee sipping and rabbit chasing relaxation.
Meanwhile, I cook breakfast.
It is my favorite meal to cook in the whole week. There isn’t the usual pressure of homework
and time. And it is a meal when we don’t
count points or calories. Also, I love
breakfast. I make pancakes and syrup
from scratch. French toast heavy on the cinnamon-y
batter. Cheesy eggs. And thick, crispy bacon. No turkey bacon allowed on Saturday morning.
Today, followed the usual routine. Matt fixed our coffee and headed off to
continue summer vacation research. I
started breakfast. Bacon. Eggs scrambled in the bacon yum yums. And cinnamon rolls.
I bought several cans of cinnamon rolls for crockpot monkey
bread on our camping trip over spring break, but I forgot to pack the other
ingredients. So we had a rare can of
iced cinnamon roll deliciousness.
Saturday breakfast also happens at the breakfast room table
and often lasts an hour or more while we talk.
Many times we plan for the weekend or upcoming activities. But we also talk about other random
things. Vacations. News.
Upcoming concerts in the works.
And how Matt has my permission to spend as much money as he wants to
secure tickets to Phil Collins, number one on my concert bucket list. Phil Collins is to me what Rush is to Matt.
Today, as we were finishing up our breakfast and winding
down our conversation, I asked Matt if he wanted to split the last cinnamon
roll. I’d been eyeing it the last ten
minutes. One section of this roll was
just a touch more toasted. And without
icing, you could see it would be a little crunchier than the surrounding iced,
soft yumminess.
Matt agreed that we should split it, so I reached over and
turned the pan in order to slice through the crunchy spot so we’d both have
part of the extra good section. I’d been
planning this, as I’d been eyeing it, to make sure neither of us got all the
crunchy spot. Unfortunately, my fork
cutting wasn’t awesome, and one piece was still crunchier.
Just as I was reaching in to get the best piece to serve to Matt,
he swooped in and grabbed the crunchy piece for himself. I said, “Hey, I was getting that piece.”
He said, “I know. But
I beat you to it. You can have the good
one.”
As we finished our breakfast, I sat there thinking about how
good it is to be in a relationship where both people try to think of the other
person first. At the same time I was
planning to serve him the extra gooey goodness, he was thinking about how to
turn the tables. And he did.
It’s just kindness. The
golden rule. Putting someone else’s
needs first. Not that either of us “needed”
any more cinnamon roll goodness.
Having been a part of a failed marriage, I’ve had ample
opportunity to examine what works and what doesn’t in a relationship. And while there are a variety of really big
things that lead to the end in my first marriage, the underlying ingredient
that sets my current relationship apart is kindness.
But not just kindness.
More like a kindness partnership.
It isn’t just my goal to be kind; it’s Matt’s goal too. It flows both ways.
I think the golden rule is like a super power. When partners are both treating the other the
way they want to be treated, it creates this circuit of kindness that just
keeps growing as it flows back and forth.
And that’s critical because “hangry”…is a real thing. And so is pumpkin time; it starts at about
9:00 pm for me.
But having this arc of kindness that is constantly flowing and
growing between two people makes hangry and pumpkin and cranky--manageable.
Survivable. Thrivable.
I realize that some people would say that Matt and I are
still in the honeymoon phase. But to be
perfectly frank, that’s some BS. In a
blended family, there are some complications and nightmares that make the
learning, growing, stretching, and struggling much more intense. And if you don’t believe me, you should spend
some time really getting to know a family like mine.
There is rarely a week that goes by that doesn’t include
some trauma from our baggage or the blended family predicament. It is kindness, every single time, that gets
us through.
I am not kind all the time.
Definitely not. I am frequently cranky,
hangry or pumpkin. But kindness is my
goal.
And I’m convinced that in the relationships of those around
me that I admire, the people who seem to still really like each other after 15,
20 or more years, there must be an undercurrent of kindness and rushing in to
take the crunchy piece.
In the very best of circumstances, relationships are hard
work. Daily work. Moment by moment work. My advice?
Share the last roll. And sometimes,
trick your partner into taking the best part.