I treat most expiration dates the way New York cab drivers treat traffic lights - as a suggestion. I know the tiny lettering on the milk carton says it's only good until today, but isn't it all arbitrary? Will the souring agents in my soy milk suddenly activate at midnight of the printed date? I always say pshaw and pour a generous tipple of the week-past milk into my matcha anyway.
It drives James a little batty. His delicate digestive system makes him less inclined to play a game of gastrointestinal roulette. He'd much rather play it safe and throw out anything past its prime. It once led to a heated debate over the half-full jar of ("perfectly good!") salsa I found in the trash.
"It's a whole month past the date," James pointed out when I yelped and pulled it out of the bin.
"There's no mold or funny fuzzies in it!" I countered with a huff. "It smells fine, looks fine and I've got a sudden hankering for nachos."
It's been a steady war between us all the years we've been married. I've managed to negotiate a silent compromise by looking at expiration dates a little more closely - not to throw anything away, of course.
Instead, the game is afoot to use them all up before James finds and tosses them. At the moment, I've got a bag of shredded cheese that, according to Publix, is due to breathe its last in a week. So mozzarella's been making a sneaky appearance in lots of meals lately - grits, quesadillas...even fried rice. Because I'd much rather use something up than have it go to waste.
That's been the theme of my thoughts lately. Mom's back in the hospital today to flood her veins with chemotherapy. The word 'therapy' is such a misnomer. We all hope her body will process these drugs in such a way that it'll cause the most amount of damage to the bad stuff while leaving her good parts intact. But who can count on poison to be so discriminate?
In turn, Umma tends to downplay the side effects. "I'm fine," she'll insist repeatedly. "It's totally tolerable." Through the Mom filter, I know this means This is hell and I'm suffering most hours of the day. In the past, I'd tell her to take it easy and rest on those post-chemo days. "Order in and just relax in bed," I'd insist, which I've since learned is the worst possible advice to give a cancer patient.
"Why?" Mom fired back. "I can still move and walk just fine! Should I just be a sick patient for the rest of my days?"
In her own way, my mother is looking to make the most of her mozzarella before it expires.
There's nothing like a diagnosis to make one more fully understand the preciousness of each new day. So when Umma isn't hooked up to IVs at the hospital, she's making big plans. She wants to travel, see the world, and - ever the foodie - try all kinds of new eats. It's an ambitious endeavor for a woman who's had her stomach removed, but she seems determined to not let cancer define nor dominate her path toward that nebulous last day.
David, one of the historic kings of Israel, once pondered man's expiration date in a psalm. The length of our days is seventy years - or eighty if we are strong, he wrote. Yet their pride is but labor and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away.
The current stats around life expectancy would agree - we've all got somewhere around eighty years, give or take a few years based on diet, lifestyle, and geography. In his book, Oliver Burkeman chooses to enumerate the average length of human life a little more starkly - to the tune of four thousand weeks.
A YouTube vlogger read this book and then decided to measure how many weeks he supposedly had left. To this day, it's been one of the most haunting infographics I've ever seen, to see my remaining life represented in a page of dots. It's since left me determined to make the most of my own remaining time.
In less than a month, I'll be turning thirty-nine. Thirty nine! It's an unthinkable number. As a child, I used to gape at adults who were in their twenties, believing them to be so mature and worldly. I thought age worked like a switch, one that magically flipped sometime after college and suddenly imbued one with all the wisdom they'd need until the end. Instead, my lived experience has been more like wandering around my nephew's playroom in pitch darkness - groping my way around and eventually finding my way, but not without stepping on at least a few painful Lego blocks. In so many ways, I wish I'd used some of those filled-in dots more circumspectly.
I don't know what King David thought of his life as he somberly noted man's expiration date as seventy or eighty years. But he chose not to write about past pains or regrets. Instead, he wrote this plea and prayer just a few breaths later -
Just as a looming expiration date forces me to strategically make the best use of an ingredient in my fridge, a new appreciation of human morbidity has made me wonder about how to make the most of my remaining days -
By leaving work and that "practical adult stuff" behind to play raucous rounds of Sneaky Snacky Squirrel with my niece,
Appreciating rare moments of family togetherness whenever we're lucky enough to have it,
and taking advantage of every moment to hold loved ones closer.
In the book Fault in Our Stars, Hazel wrote this eulogy for her best friend, Gus.
I am not a mathematician, but I know this: There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There's .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I'm likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn't trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I'm grateful.
I know it's morbid for most to think about ends and eulogies. No one - especially no one graced with the vim and vigor of youth - wants to think about dying. But part of the wisdom gained from numbering my days has been sheer and effusive gratitude. I'm grateful for all the small moments I still get to have with my mom. I'm grateful for family whose steady love remains unfazed by state lines. I'm grateful for an able body that can still learn, play, and move. I'm grateful for friends who remind me that I'm more than my mistakes. I'm grateful for a husband who envisions and champions my potential in a grander way than I ever could.
So I'm still taking chances with our fridge. I'm letting the aged cheddar age just a little longer in our fridge. And I like to think that the half bottle of wine in the back is just going some magical fermentation that'll just make it better. But when it comes to the use of my time, I'm looking to use it well and more wisely before it's time.