To Upgrades

Sometimes, we save months or years for the upgrade.

 

An efficiency apartment: one room and two doors, one for the entrance and one for the bathroom. Then, a one bedroom. An entirely separate bedroom. Then a house, but still renting. Then a house, still renting, in a nicer neighborhood. Then a nicer city. Then a house you own. The housing bubble works in your favor. A bigger house. When you wake up in the morning and make your breakfast, everyone else can sleep and not hear you.

The cars get newer, the clothes get better. The wine gets just a little older. Aged.

You’re lucky. You’re the first to admit it.

Other upgrades just come to us, not because of our patience, not because we have finally stashed away enough cash.

You’re flying home from a wedding with your 6 year old. He’s old enough to sit through a flight, but not old enough to know, when exactly, to use his inside voice. You consider every year he is alive an upgrade. You ask him to wait while you get your boarding passes and low and behold the travel gods smile upon you and move you both to first class.

You settle in and as the flight attendant offers a basket full of Oreo cookies and other name brand snacks and your son cannot stop commenting on the Size of the Seats, you look around and realize you are the only one in first class traveling with a young child. He’s asking, loudly, for all the types of juices, and you watch around you as they pull out laptops and call up spreadsheets.  They order scotch and other small bottles. You have a Diet Coke and your son has an apple juice. And an orange juice. And a cranberry juice. And 3 Oreos.

 The plane hasn’t even taken off yet.

Take the upgrades. Go for the bigger picture, the better sound, the bigger room, the larger snack basket. Enjoy it. Tomorrow you will go back to the smaller apartment, the older car, the slower Internet speed. But today, today you have a choice.