On busy-ness

Tonight, I have a work event to attend. Last night, Lester had a City Council hearing to staff. Tuesday night, I had a board meeting. Monday night, Lester had to work late at the City Council meeting. Consequently, neither one of us has been home for dinner at the same time.

Last week, Lester and I started our Coursera Modern and Contemporary Poetry class online. What with poems to close-read, video discussions to watch, forums to participate in, and writing assignments and quizzes coming up, I am already woefully behind.

The boys' music class starts this weekend. My friend Stacey has invited us to the Frederick County fair, since we both missed the state fair this year because of rain. I'm thinking about going, but I also need to meet a friend who has donated clothes for Clair and I told my Dad we'd have a movie date on Saturday, because I never get to spend time with just him anymore, and it's clear in recent phone conversations that he misses me.

We're determined to start visiting churches, including going back to the one we went to on Sunday. Committing to church again will mean a lot of things, not the least of which is more weekend-busyness, and the end to lazy Sundays.

I have started three books recently, all of which are gathering dust on my nightstand, looking forlorn.

Speaking of dust, I won't even begin to talk about the atrocity which is my house. Let's just say this: If a child goes missing somewhere in the country, it's entirely possible he or she might be found in one of the piles of laundry (clean and dirty) that are currently blocking the views of the sun in my house.

Lester and I cuddled up and watched a movie last night together (Ryan Gosling was in it, therefore: good movie) but we somehow can't seem to find time to talk about our yearly or family goals, discuss for the hundredth time what to do about the mouse problem we have (I want to get a cat; Lester is less-than-on-board), or hash out anything that requires us to think hard or make any kind of decision.

Oh, and me finding time to work out, so that I won't look 5-months-pregnant for the REST OF MY LIFE? Ha.

Ha! Ha! And ha!

Yes, we are busy, busy, busy around the Davis household. And I was starting to get into a funk about it. A little bit of "waah, waah, waah...there's never enough time. I'll never get it all together. This blows."

And then I remembered this essay by Anna Quindlen, which a friend sent to me when I was pregnant with the boys. At the time, I had no idea why it made me bawl so:

All my babies are gone now. I say this not in sorrow but in disbelief. I take great satisfaction in what I have today: three almost-adults, two taller than I am, one closing in fast. Three people who read the same books I do and have learned not to be afraid of disagreeing with me in their opinion of them, who sometimes tell vulgar jokes that make me laugh until I choke and cry, who need razor blades and shower gel and privacy, who want to keep their doors closed more than I like. Who, miraculously, go to the bathroom, zip up their jackets and move food from plate to mouth all by themselves. Like the trick soap I bought for the bathroom with a rubber ducky at its center, the baby is buried deep within each, barely discernible except through the unreliable haze of the past.  
Everything in all the books I once poured over is finished for me now. Penelope Leach., T. Berry Brazelton., Dr. Spock. The ones on sibling rivalry and sleeping through the night and early-childhood education, have all grown obsolete. Along with Goodnight Moon and Where the Wild Things Are, they are battered, spotted, well used. But I suspect that if you flipped the pages dust would rise like memories. What those books taught me, finally, and what the women on the playground taught me, and the well-meaning relations --what they taught me, was that they couldn't really teach me very much at all.  
Raising children is presented at first as a true-false test, then becomes multiple choice, until finally, far along, you realize that it is an endless essay. No one knows anything. One child responds well to positive reinforcement, another can be managed only with a stern voice and a timeout. One child is toilet trained at 3, his sibling at 2.  
When my first child was born, parents were told to put baby to bed on his belly so that he would not choke on his own spit-up. By the time my last arrived, babies were put down on their backs because of research on sudden infant death syndrome. To a new parent this ever-shifting certainty is terrifying, and then soothing. Eventually you must learn to trust yourself. Eventually the research will follow. I remember 15 years ago poring over one of Dr. Brazelton's wonderful books on child development, in which he describes three different sorts of infants: average, quiet, and active. I was looking for a sub-quiet codicil for an 18-month old who did not walk. Was there some thing wrong with his fat little legs? Was there something wrong with his tiny little mind? Was he developmentally delayed, physically challenged? Was I insane? Last year he went to China . Next year he goes to college. He can talk just fine. He can walk, too. 
Every part of raising children is humbling, too. Believe me, mistakes were made. They have all been enshrined in the, 'Remember-When- Mom-Did Hall of Fame.' The outbursts, the temper tantrums, the bad language, mine, not theirs. The times the baby fell off the bed. The times I arrived late for preschool pick up. The nightmare sleepover. The horrible summer camp. The day when the youngest came barreling out of the classroom with a 98 on her geography test, and I responded, 'What did you get wrong?'. (She insisted I include that.) The time I ordered food at the McDonald's drive-through speaker and then drove away without picking it up from the window. (They all insisted I include that.) I did not allow them to watch the Simpsons for the first two seasons. What was I thinking?  
But the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make while doing this. I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of the three of them, sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4 and 1. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get onto the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less.  
Even today I'm not sure what worked and what didn't, what was me and what was simply life. When they were very small, I suppose I thought someday they would become who they were because of what I'd done. Now I suspect they simply grew into their true selves because they demanded in a thousand ways that I back off and let them be. The books said to be relaxed and I was often tense, matter-of-fact and I was sometimes over the top. And look how it all turned out. I wound up with the three people I like best in the world, who have done more than anyone to excavate my essential humanity. That's what the books never told me. I was bound and determined to learn from the experts. It just took me a while to figure out who the experts were.

So what does this essay mean in regards to my current hectic life?

Does it mean we should keep pressing on, scheduling fun things for the boys, working late to keep our careers on an upward trajectory, running, running, running, so we can achieve our goals -- and try harder to enjoythe fullness of our lives? Or does it mean we should all slow down some, take more deep breaths and mental pictures, and continue ignoring the laundry and the mouse problem, while cuddling with my husband at night, trusting that everything else will fall into place without us having to have it all together all the time?

I don't know.

But reading this has thankfully arrested my waah-waah-waah-fest, and made me take a few minutes to put together that Shutterfly photo book for Clair that I've been meaning to do for over a month. 

Life is full. Life is good. Life is short. 

I'll try to remember that more often.