Breaking the Salt Shaker
A lesson in humility and patience
Nearly eight years ago, in September 2015, I wrote the following for a local newspaper column. Back then, we had five children aged seven down to a nearly five-month-old, and life was hectic, to say the least. While I’m a little more patient than I was then, I also still have my volcanic moments. Life is still hectic, but in different ways, and I enjoy a few more moments of quiet (now we have helpful teenagers!). As much as the rubs on the wounds still make me wince, thank God for the moments He keeps me humble and my faith salty,
On a recent midweek morning, I found myself hurriedly making two meals for later in the day. The first was minestrone soup, a colorful mish-mash of garden tomatoes and leftover cooked vegetables from suppers a few days prior, plus good old macaroni and half dozen spices. The second was a slow cooker BBQ chicken dish—a recipe of the dump-and-dash variety. As the soup simmered on the stove top, I started the other recipe on the nearby counter. When I opened the cupboard door to take out the salt, a ceramic shaker precariously placed fell out, smashing the counter, bouncing, and shattering completely on the kitchen floor.
My instant reaction was a mix of frustration, disappointment, relief, and inspiration. I felt frustration because I was in a hurry and the mess meant yet more delay than I could handle. Disappointment because the shaker was a wedding gift now fit only for the garbage. Relief because the shaker and its pieces somehow missed the toddler sitting with a bowl and spoon two feet away. And inspiration because I knew this could be an incident fit for a column!
As I cleaned up the fragments, shooing away curious children, I tried to appreciate the lack of bodily injury and the chance—albeit not desired—to learn a little patience. As I finished wiping and sweeping up the floor, I felt pleased that I hadn't lost my temper, and even a little proud that I'd come up with an idea on how to finagle a moment of insight out of the crash. So I returned to food prep.
But I'd forgotten about the counter, particularly the white plastic bag that had held some produce and that now cradled ceramic slivers. I moved a pepper grinder, nudging the bag, and it tumbled—with all its fine and jagged contents—in a shower to the floor.
How quickly the tiny, and the mighty, fall.
I wish I could say that this experience was exceptional, an uncommonly hectic snapshot in a somewhat frenzied life. It was, in certain respects. But in so many others, it wasn't. Most days I have at least one deep-breathing moment, a few seconds of inhaling through my nose, exhaling through my mouth, usually a few desperate prayers thrown in. Sometimes the brief time out helps. Things calm down. I get myself, and the floor or whatever requires straightening, together. But sometimes whatever situation precipitated it explodes even more powerfully. The mess multiplies. My blood pressure rises.
And then I learn the nitty-gritty lesson, the no-pun-intended, salt-in-the-wound truth: I cannot control everything. I fool myself into thinking this fairly frequently. “I should have moved the salt shaker farther back. I could have started prepping sooner.” The coulda-would-shouldas might even be true. But life, I’m ever so incrementally learning, is unpredictable. And the process of learning how to deal with what is, come Hades or high water, is vastly more difficult than psychoanalyzing the unfixable past. It’s necessary, so I don’t do things like place ceramic salt shakers precariously on shelves again. But it doesn’t change the grit on the floor.
And sometimes the circumstances mandate immediate, visceral action—like moving the toddler and whipping out wet paper towels to pick up broken pieces. At the same time, they require prudence. I have said harsh and bellowing things in the heat of stress more often than I can count. This is terribly unhealthy, for me and for my wide-eyed children. And though I know I will always fight the urge to go off like a tea kettle singing a steamy, screetchy tune when chaos occurs, I keep trying to learn how to breathe, to pause, to speak clearly but gently, to learn that the unplanned can bring good as well as frustration.
Shortly after the second salty mess, when I’d cleaned up again, finished the recipes, wrangled the kids into clothes and shoes and herded them out the door, I couldn’t find the car keys in their normal place. As I sprinted across the front lawn with the toddler, hoping against hope that they were already in the van, I saw them sitting on the driver’s seat. “Oh, thank God,” I gasped. With an ear-to-ear grin, my eldest piped up from the backseat, “I put the keys there for you so you wouldn’t have to look for them!”
That’s just what I get for not controlling everything. Two gritty, granular spills. A column for you. And a conscientious kid who’s learning to help out.