To That Family Eating Pizza in the Rain

This is an adaptation of my weekly newsletter, Adventures Big & Small. If you want to receive emails like these, click here to subscribe.

Remember my new favorite line — the way you do anything is the way you do everything?

It was probably 2 years ago now that I remember us standing anxiously outside Damn Fine Pizza in the Outer Sunset, waiting for a table inside. It looked like it might rain, so outside wasn’t an option. And our daughter was one year old, and we were hungry and approaching bedtime and a smidge irritable.

Megan and I were both people-watching a family of four sitting outside, two kids, one still a toddler. They were having a great time, laughing. It was one of those days where you needed a puffy in the shade where we stood, but there was no wind and in the sun you wanted to be in a T-shirt. Which is what they were wearing.

But did they see those dark clouds forming? One of those rare summer thunderclouds that downpour and whip in cold air off the ocean at any moment? I think we both concluded that they must not have noticed.

And all of a sudden there it was. Pouring rain.

There was still sunshine slanting in under the clouds, lighting up the rain, and what did that sunshine illuminate but a family of four, heads up to the sky, laughing their heads off, while their pizza boxes soaked through.

Ok, at some point the toddler started to cry and they mobilized and headed to their car. But the parents were still smiling despite the fact that I’m pretty sure they were going to have to make some food when they got home. And draw up warm baths for the kids.

My wife and I looked at each other with matching expressions of envy. THAT family. That’s how we want to be.

Since that moment we’ve referenced the Damn Fine rain-on-pizza scene many times, and we are constantly reminding each other that we want to be fun parents. And it’s all relative — to some of our college friends we probably seem pretty loose and free, but when we visit the Virgin Islands (where I drafted this newsletter) we hang out with my high school friends who inevitably make us feel a little square.

I should write an email about them next. I don’t think they ever take the beach bags out of their cars. In fact, I’m pretty sure they never even take the keys out of their cars. Last summer the mom traveled to Europe to see family. She brought two kids and the family dog, by herself, and it wasn’t notable enough to mention unless you ask about it.

Anyway, that’s all for another email, but what I really came here today to say was that I’m proud of us, that I think we’re doing a great job edging towards the parents we want to be. And these photos, snapped maybe an hour after we’d landed in St. Thomas, show it.

There we are with those same friends, straight off the plane and into the ocean, three kids and a dog splashing around in the fading sunlight, watching rain begin to pour from the sky. I started to shiver with the chill. One of the kids was obviously not stoked on the rain. I had to run up and throw a towel over my camera bag and the dry clothes we planned to throw over our salty selves for dinner. If the rain kept up, it would soak through all of it.

But I sprinted back down to the ocean and hopped in, laughing, snapping photos, watching our daughter revel in the million golden splashes glinting sunset as the rain crashed into the ocean.

The way you do anything is the way you do everything.

I hope that’s the way we do everything.

– David