Probably the most hackneyed proverb to emerge from China is the old curse, “May you live in interesting times.” Interesting if what we think we want our lives to be — and reasonably enough, when we’re thinking in terms of zest and fun and diversion. What interesting fusion cuisine! What an interesting pre-Raphaelite museum exhibit! What an interesting and precocious daughter you have, madam!
But interesting is emphatically not what we want if we are doctor’s patients; a medically boring person tends to be a healthy one. Interesting times — such as the ones we appear to be living in now — are characterized not by civic and fiscal health or fascinating museum exhibits, but by crisis. It’s an excellent curse, really.
Lately, the times at our house have been exceedingly interesting. There were with broken bones (a child). There was brutal back pain (one adult), excruciating foot pain (another adult), and the bedridden and oxygen-pumped presence of a frail and aged relative whose brief vacation to the United States turned into an arduous monthlong ordeal. There were hours and hours of hospital, hospice, and bedside visits. There were interesting houseguests, interesting disputes, and buckets of interesting rain that reconfigured parts of the back yard.
To be sure, November was not nearly as interesting as life can be, but it was sufficiently interesting that, personally, I am glad to see the back of it.
All at once, normal life has resumed. Coinciding with Advent, with Christmas music in the air and the arrival of stacks of chocolate in the stores, the grueling aspects of the last four weeks have melted away. Almost overnight, once-crippling aches and pains have vanished. A final set of X-rays showed clean, repaired bones. And so complete was the bedridden relative’s recuperation that he was able to fly home.
The medical equipment people have retrieved the hospital bed and oxygen pump they’d installed on the first floor, and the cloying smell of the sickroom is giving way to the refreshing scents of mulling spices, pine, and, if such a thing can be said to have a fragrance, all-encompassing gratitude. The pall has lifted.
We think we want interesting. We may even occasionally envy other people what seem like the brilliant details of their exciting, exotic lives. Looking at our own lives, we might sometimes think, well this is pretty humdrum. Yet how sweet it is — a quiet dinner, a warm bath, tucking a child into bed — if we will take the trouble to notice it.
After the past month, I do not think I will ever again take for granted the quotidian pleasures of an orderly domestic life — or of days spent without a particle of pain or the imminent prospect of loss. That’s one good thing you can say for disruption: It brings home the preciousness of ordinary days.
Meghan Cox Gurdon’s column appears on Sunday and Thursday. She can be contacted at [email protected].
