The research technique that helps me love the people in my life more fully...
...even when I get poo water on my face
There is a short video of me running a bath for my toddler and baby on my husband’s phone. This was a few years ago. Dan was filming our daughter, Joni, singing, and I’m in the background checking the temperature of the bath water. When she’s finished, Joni hops over to me and uses my thighs as a step to climb into the bath. This tiny thing annoyed me a huge amount at the time. It was painful! I asked her so many times, “Please can you not tread on my legs, it hurts.” “You’re treading on my legs again, it’s painful, I’ll lift you in instead.” “Stop treading on my legs!!!” I asked her every day and for some reason she never learnt. I got so annoyed about this small thing. It didn’t even hurt that much, but by 6pm I was physically drained. The baby bit my nipple; someone poked me in the eye; I trod on a surprisingly sharp mini Elsa that cut my foot open; and I wanted to not be climbed on for a minute or two. An unrealistic expectation in hindsight, given I had two children under two.
A strange thing happened last week. I watched this video two years later - my daughters are now 4 and 2 - and I laughed at that particular moment. From a distance I could see its sweetness and silliness. I even missed it, longed for it. I wanted to speak to the version of me in that video and say, “Be a bit annoyed, but not too much. It’s not that serious. You have years left to not be climbed upon. Let her use your knees as a rocketpad. Look around. Look around! Remember everything.”
[The aforementioned annoying climbing!]
It struck me as I watched my younger self get more irritated that this is the challenge in love: to approach present annoyances in context and with humour, as if we were seeing them from the future. What are all the things that annoy me now that I’ll long for one day, I wonder? The way my husband nags me because I don’t close the cupboard doors in the kitchen or - apparently - because I stack the dishwasher like I’m drunk? How my mum chases me about dates for a family gathering approximately 82 years in advance? The dozens of WhatsApps from friends it takes to organise a short dinner, then the dozen more from everyone running late or cancelling on the day? Is there a way I might be able to cherish these little annoyances in the present, rather than only being able to enjoy them once they’re over? Which is another way of asking: how can I love better, not tomorrow, but today?
The answer came to me when I read a piece of research…