"How we spend our days is how we spend our lives"

"How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing....There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by. A life of good days lived in the senses is not enough. The life of sensation is the life of greed; it requires more and more. The life of the spirit requires less and less; time is ample and its passage sweet." --Annie Dillard

I have a new Facebook cover photo. It's a picture I took of Eli riding his scooter on the boardwalk at Long Beach (that's Long Beach, Long Island, not Long Beach, California) at sunset, bundled in his red winter jacket against the chilly December wind.

The picture is perfect. In fact, I'd be lying if I said I hadn't considered the photo opportunity when I spontaneously decided to load Eli in the car that afternoon. (And I had two dastardly ulterior motives: (1) Eli had taken a random 10 a.m. nap that morning and I knew he'd sneak in another one in the car and (2) I knew it would make Phil jealous.)

But what you see on Facebook is of course not the whole story. Earlier that day, we had gone into Manhattan so that Eli could see his 11-year-old cousin, whom he adores. Then we split up so that Phil could go with his family to a football game while I took Eli home. I found myself in the middle of thousands of tourists in Bryant Park, and all of them were behind me trying to squeeze by the line for the carousel, the line for the ice skating rink and the line for the food truck while Eli insisted on trying to push his stroller himself through the crowds. In desperation I snatched him up and took off while he kicked and screamed, alternately crying for his pacifier and telling me that he wanted to go on a "venture" (adventure -- I have no idea where he picked that up). Somehow I shepherded him onto the subway, where his pacifier fell on the floor a few stops from home. There are not enough wipes in the world to clean the subway floor off a pacifier that's going into my child's mouth, so the whole car (and then the whole neighborhood) had to listen to Eli wail for his paci until we got home, at which point he disembarked for his stroller and casually announced, "I'm going to play."

I think I may have actually bellowed, "I THOUGHT YOU WANTED YOUR PACIFIER!" I have been planning to let Eli decide when he's done with his pacifier, but at that point I wanted to throw them all out the window.

So then Eli was happily playing with his extensive play-doh collection, but it was unseasonably warm and I couldn't bear the thought of staying inside. I figured we could sneak in another nap in the jogging stroller, so I told Eli I wanted to take him for a run. To my surprise, he said, "I don't want yellow signs" -- our usual running route through Forest Park is full of yellow signs that Eli takes great delight in pointing out at each turn.

I said, "Well, where do you want to go?" and he said -- I swear to you -- "I wanna go a place magical!" (I have no idea where he picked that up either.) So I thought a minute and said, "Well, what if we go to the beach?" Because what's more magical than the beach in December?

He literally jumped up and down and yelled, "YEAH!"

So I grabbed his scooter out of the closet (at which point a large keyboard fell on my foot, temporarily crippling me) and hustled him to the car. He fell asleep, as I predicted, and just as I was turning onto the street that leads to the beach I heard a sleepy voice say, "Hey! We made it!" I installed him in the jogging stroller with his blanket and pacifier and we took off down the boardwalk, running extra fast to warm up against the cold. After a short run, I yelled, "Anyone who wants to go onto the sand raise your hand and take your pacifier out of your mouth!" and we ran down the ramp to the sand, where Eli giggled and said, "Take my shoes off!"

We tickled and cuddled and rolled around in the sand. We shivered at how cold it felt on our feet and we admired the sunset and the airplanes. Our noses ran and our toes tingled. I felt heart-stoppingly happy.

It was getting cold and dark, so I let Eli scoot on the boardwalk for just a few minutes before it was time to go.

And then, the car ride home. Google Maps informed me the trip would take a long 45 minutes. Eli polished off most of a box of peanut butter crackers and tossed the remainder up in the air, where they rained down on my head like confetti. Then he started requesting that effing pacifier again. I knew, I knew it was somewhere on top of him, because I had handed it to him along with the peanut butter crackers, but he kept yelling that he couldn't find it, and I kept yelling back that I couldn't find it either because I was driving, and then he begged me in a small, sad voice, "Stop driving, Mom, please, Mom," and I kept telling him that there was nothing I could do and I didn't have it, and finally I dug his LeapPad out of my bag and tossed it on top of him, but after a few minutes I heard, "It can't work!" and he handed it back to me at a red light at which point I saw that he had been entering "xksxkkwskkewk2wk2" into the calendar (who knew this thing even had a calendar?), which I quickly exited out of and gave it back to him.

At some point during the maniacal drive it occurred to me that our whole day had actually been a perfect encapsulation of parenthood. A frustrating, embarrassing, exhausting morning followed by an hour or so of shining, heart-exploding joy followed by more teeth-grinding and hair-pulling. When we got home, I opened a bottle of wine while cooking macaroni and cheese and shooing Eli away from the burners while the pasta cooked, but then we sat down at the table together and Eli made polite, mature conversation ("You have macaroni and cheese, Mom? Eat more macaroni and cheese, Mom!") and we smiled at each other over our bowls of bunny pasta. A parenting roller coaster.

It's a complete cliche to say that moments like the one on the beach are what makes all the aggravation worth it. In fact, it might be more accurate to say I'm driven to manufacture moments like those because I need to feel compensated for all that aggravation, like, I had a miserable morning so we are going to do something zany and epic and we are going to enjoy it, damn it! At the end of the day, feeling drained, I found myself trying to analyze what had gone wrong, as though if I had just been a calmer, more patient, less selfish parent in the first place we would have had a more even-keeled day. Sometimes -- and I'm sure I'm not alone in this -- I feel like I respond to toddler behavior by sinking to that level myself: But I don't want to be responsible for convincing you to use the potty this morning! But I don't want to sit here while you demand that I play play-doh a certain way! At least once a day I find myself surprised to be thrust into the position of decision-maker, of responsible adult, of Mom.

So I want to stop trying to quantify these moments, weighing whether they are "worth it." The days are what they are: frustrating and joyful and exasperating and funny and challenging and exhilarating and maddening and meaningful all at the same time.