The Surprise Factor

Sometimes the weekend comes, and it’s time for me to write my weekly Newsletter, and I sit at my computer and have no idea what to write about. Some people call that writer’s block. But for me, it’s more than that. It’s the feeling that I have nothing of value to impart. No words of wisdom, no lesson-building anecdotes, no organizational break-throughs. No epiphanies.


So when my daughter bounced into my office—as I sat staring at my blank computer screen—I asked her if she could think of anything. Without a second’s hesitation, she said:”Tell everyone about my play.” (This is a child with little self-esteem issues.)


“What specifically about your play?” I countered.


“Tell them about how fleeting, but how special, it was.”


Still confused as to exactly what valuable lessons she had in mind, I asked again: “What about your play would anyone else care about?”


“Teach them the lesson that the play itself was so fleeting. That you practice and practice and then in two nights, it’s all over. But that it was such a blast.”


Now there’s a Newsletter.


Cristina went to school early for weeks ahead of the play, rehearsing at 7 AM when other classmates were barely rolling out of bed. Week after week of early-morning school drop-offs were followed by a solid week of three-hour after-school rehearsals. Mixed in with the various other extracurricular and sports activities that most of the kids in the cast are also involved in made for many road-weary moms and dads, too.


So many big life events require enormous prep times. Careful planning. Logistical hurdles. Financial and calendar challenges.


My own wedding required eight months worth of invitation-addressing, ring-shopping and reception-planning. Pregnancies involve nine months worth of dreaming and wondering. Of re-arranging rooms and furniture. Purchasing the layette and arranging it in closets and drawers. Painting and decorating the nursery.


I mentally reviewed the umpteen practice sessions for concerts and recitals of my own four kids. Of countless renderings of “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” on pint-sized violins. Of counting out rhythms and reviewing key signatures.


Life is mostly all about process. But sometimes it’s about the actual performance. And the surprises that come with it.


In the case of my daughter’s play, opening night brought with it a nearly flawless performance by the entire cast. Cues were spoken on time, words were delivered with perfect memory and dance and vocal numbers went off without a hitch. But on the second night, the kid who was to have delivered my daughter’s cue forgot his line, my daughter ad-libbed, and giggles interrupted what was to have been a serious song at the end of the show. The bloopers gave rise to incessant chatter on the drive home; the surprise factor proved priceless.


Sometimes, because not all parties are involved in the process and because the law that “things that can go wrong sometimes do go wrong” is always at play, the end result—the big event—holds the most value. Sometimes the wedding ceremony is the much stronger memory than the months of preparation leading up to it. Sometimes the birthing experience erases those months of anxiety and preparation, because it is life-altering in and of itself. Sometimes the play or the recital or the concert is so marvelous that, when the music or the drama is heard or seen for the first time, the surprise factor takes over and all thoughts of carpooling, early-rising and practicing take backseat to the performers on stage and the actual spotlight. My husband and I never attended any of our daughter’s school play rehearsals, so sitting in the audience and seeing it for the first time was a fun-filled experience. Watching our daughter and her many friends perform—the event itself—was what it was all about for us. The surprise factor took center stage and we were perfectly happy that it did.


We were privileged to have taken part in a surprise birthday dinner party for a dear new friend this week. Not having had anything to do with any of the arrangements (her more-than capable husband took care of everything beautifully), we were able to simply sit back and thoroughly enjoy the surprise factor. We enjoyed watching the look on her face as she entered the room; we enjoyed the food and the drink and the cake and the conversation with dinner companions without any anxiety. The event in and of itself was enough. The surprise factor took center stage.


Saturday night, my husband and I attended a comedy club at our church. It was good, clean fun and, given that it was a weekend date night that was out of the ordinary—and that the headline act and every one of the participants was very, very funny—it had a wonderfully high surprise factor. Sunday night, my husband took the boys to a concert by the Navy Band at our local high school; they had no idea what to expect and wound up completely dazzled by the surprise factor. While they were at the concert, I took my daughter out for a quick movie…a rare treat on a school night. It wasn’t just that the movie was cute; it was the whole mom-takes-teen-daughter-on-a-movie-date thing. The drive over, the theater, the getting out on a rainy Sunday night.


Sometimes we get blessed by serendipity and by surprise. Of meeting an old friend for lunch because she happens to be in town visiting or housing a total stranger because the extra room in your house it is needed. It is that catching us off-guard quality that provides the best memory. That getting away or doing something off-beat…and laughing in a way that we don’t usually do. And we ignore the process because it wasn’t the main thing or because we simply had nothing to do with it. We realize that the main thing is to just enjoy the main thing.


I find myself sometimes taking myself—and life—too seriously. We are dealing with childhood cancer over here, after all. And other kids and a house and a dog and bills and cleaning and chauffering and conflicting calendars. Sometimes, it’s good to just let the surprise factor completely take over.


Here’s hoping that your week brings a wonderful surprise or two and some laughter-inducing serendipity your way!


Carolina


A Rocket Mom Society Note


Our final G.A. T. meeting will be held at the mother ship on Tuesday night, the 28th, at 7:30 PM. Our topic: “Getting your Act Together: The Papers of Your Life.” Find out the single secret for dealing with the daily mail…and how it revolutionized paper-handling in my own household. Discover tricks for getting calendars coded, bills paid, and personal notes written. If magazines, newspapers, journals and photo albums have ever bogged you down, you need to come and learn from fellow rocket moms! Questions? emomrx@yahoo.com.
Come and taste a meeting and see if you’d like to give the society a try.