Time has been whizzing by lately, and there doesn't seem to be anything I can do to stop it. We are so bound by routine these days--not more than ever, I suppose, but it feels that way. I get up at 5:30 every morning, and even though I pack school lunches and snacks the night before, and I try and take care of as many odds and ends before going to bed, I still feel like I'm racing against the clock each morning. L.'s been a good sport about the mornings overall, but this doesn't mean it's been easy to get him up and out of bed and fed and dressed by 6:50 each day.
When I was younger, I balanced my work and life by pushing a lot of my school work to the evenings. Scott and I would sit and grade until about 10:00 pm, and then unwind for another hour before bed. In the past couple of years, though, I've noticed that I can't do that anymore. My brain is too tired to focus on much of anything past 9:00 pm. Once the kids are in bed I pack the lunches (a process, really, deciding what to put in T.'s lunch, and how to balance the nutrition-to-treat ratio), and even assembling L.'s brown bag (he's still eating in the cafeteria! Two Lender's bagels, a protein bar, and a carton of cocount water) sometimes feels like one extra job too many. Actually, everything I do in the mornings feels like one job too many.
Long ago I noticed a direct correlation between the number of things a person has to do, and how quickly time passes by. This is not a shattering revelation, by any means. But I've been fighting against it for a long time. It gets increasingly more and more difficult to carve out the idle time that I need so much--the time I think we all need. The weekends have felt so much sweeter this fall, than ever before. I want to soak up every second of them, surround myself with Scott and the kids, breathe in the smell of T.'s hair, wander my house with a good book, sip my coffee on the porch and hope to catch the leaves in the very act of turning color.
Last night, even though she was eyes-drooping tired, T. dragged her feet over every little bedtime thing. She clung to me during storytime, and threw her body against mine when it was time for me to get up. I pushed my impatience away, along with the thought of the lunches to pack, animals to feed, and the half dozen other small chores still left.
"I have to get up T.," I told her, disentangling her arms from around my neck.
"Stay Mama, stay!" she pleaded. "Just one more minute!"
The minute turned into two, of course, and then five. When I did get up, T. sighed and flopped back onto her bed. "Why do all the good parts of life go by so fast?" she asked, hugging the comforter to her chin.
I felt myself sigh too, deep down to my very core. "I don't know," I said, and I really didn't. I'm not sure anyone does. Maybe so we don't take them for granted? Maybe so we pay more attention to them all, those good parts that are so sweet and fleeting, and leave us only wanting more.