Chancing upon a new Gorgonzola would fill my parents with the unbridled excitement normally reserved for finding a gold coin tucked under an errant broadsheet in the middle of a polar night in Hammerfest.
That cheese would dominate all dinner conversations moving forward and fetch the best spot on the table — for successive nights, polar or otherwise.
All other food finds met with similar glee. And we could count on them winding their way into our pantry or fridge so we could all partake of these small marvels.
That simple beauty of finding wonder in little things, and wanting to share it, is among the many treasured legacies my mother and father gifted us.
Often, the eureka is in the prosaic, in the “hmm” moments of the day-to-day, small and seemingly inconsequential on the surface, yet under-run by immeasurable value. And when you string them together, life becomes beautifully big.
I can vouch for this from personal experience, because 30 years ago, my wife Maria and I embarked on a Gorgonzola diet.
It began with a dinner conversation that may or may not have involved a blue-veined cheese and a bottle of homemade red, during which I tabled quitting my marketing job to join the ranks of the self-employed as a freelance copywriter, followed by Maria green-lighting the idea without so much as a blink.
I never owned a pet. But I grew up with a pepperwood-speckled whitish owl that stood sentry atop our 1968 black-and-white solid state 21-inch Zenith. I can’t imagine what manner of stuffing the taxidermist used to fill out its skin, but that owl was always one determined air draft away from tipping over onto to the kitchen floor. Thankfully, we had carpeting.
What it lacked in heft, though, it made up for with aplomb, perched oh so knowingly on that TV in that way that intimates “I know what you’re thinking of doing.”
We did not seek divination from a dead owl, if that’s what you’re thinking. But those steely eyes, forward facing and immutably locked in the only direction owls’ eyes can look, straight ahead, would have impelled the jitteriest skeptic forward.
So we extricated ourselves from the cat’s cradle of cautious reasons not to pursue our dream and took a leap of faith, hoping that the agency inherent in advocating for the eloquent ordinariness of daily life, all the alleged nothings that in the end add up to a whole lot of something, surely had to be more than mere mathematical reverie.
Owls live by silent flight. Their wings and feathers dampen locomotion-induced sound. They’re Nikes without the swoosh. It’s what makes them such formidable hunters.
We met the turbulence without flapping our wings, choosing to glide steadfastly instead.
I’ve been freelancing from home ever since, and it’s worked out splendidly for my other job, being a father and a husband.