Hurry up and slow down.
I'm not really sure what I've got for you today. I'm feeling unmotivated and uninspired which usually means I need to talk it out. Too much rain. I'm tired. Lots on my to-do list. Change is coming. I slept in a little bit this morning and it left me feeling a bit rushed and it's not even 6am. I've been feeling rushed a lot lately. I found myself telling Tagg to hurry up four times in the last two days. Are we really always running late? No. So what's the deal?
I think it's because school is letting out next week. Last year it was worry over how to entertain them for so many hours for weeks on end without a break. This time? It's acknowledging that this summer will in fact be the most time I will get consecutively with my girl. Probably ever. Next summer we'll have swim team and sports and camps and friend time competing for our attention. This is the peak of my girl wanting to spend so many hours for weeks on end without a break.
This year it's worry over how I can gobble up my little girl and keep her in my pocket before she heads out to kindergarten next year. She's so ready and I'm not worried one bit for how she'll do. She's smart and independent and creative. She's thrived and excelled in this extra year of JK. She's a confident achiever. I'm excited to watch her spread her wings and I get the first row view of who she'll become. Only I won't. She'll be gone too long. The bus comes at 7am and gets home at 4pm. Door to door delivery isn't quick. How will she be during those 10 hours? Amazing. She's going to be this incredible kid and I won't get to be there. I get the sleepy girl with tangled bed head from her Frosty Blanket and I'll feed her and hand her clean clothes and help her find her shoes and hug her and send her off. Off into a world without me. Where she'll laugh and make friends and fall down and cry and learn and push and expand herself and navigate cafeterias and mean kids and find out who her friends are and explore solar systems and world maps and who she wants to be. And I won't get to be there.
Does anyone else want to come to my pity party? I'll be serving lots of cheese and prosecco with the whine. And feel free to bring your younger kids, poor Tagg will probably be velcroed to my side in a constant snug until next year when I'll send him off too. Then comes the bigger question, who will I be all day while they're busy being themselves? Oh man, I'll tackle that another time.
I'm just going to have to find ways to balance that big thought with the necessity of doing actual life. It's fun to read a Scary Mommy article about letting them be little or how the laundry and dishes can wait or how we'll always regret not playing one more game of Sorry or letting them stay up late. But the truth of the matter is that I can't be a martyr and a good mother at the same time. I tried and it didn't work.
I need to sip coffee or wine with my friends and bitch about Nashville getting cancelled and Tagg's refusal to eat a vegetable in weeks. I need to take nights off to be with my husband. I need to go to work meetings. I need to clean our house and fix dinner and grocery shop and not get caught up in making every moment feel magical. I need to teach my children what it means to be a mother and a wife and a woman. And that it's not just about sitting on the floor eating popsicles and playing legos.
But the biggest thing I need to do is to remember that living in the moment doesn't just mean making every moment extraordinary. It means giving your focus and attention to the ordinary and everyday.