Deep Breaths

One day at a time, one day at a time, one day at a time.  I find myself saying these words a lot these days.

Maybe it's because I'm feeling old and am seeking a means to slow down time.  Maybe it's because I'm feeling increasingly anxious lately over the ever-growing list of things I want to do and things I need to do, and things I fear I will never get done.  (Franklin Covey and its prioritized lists be damned!!! I don't feel an endorphin rush for having checked one item off a list of 100).

Many years ago, in BK time (Before Kids), I silently ridiculed acquaintances who lived overscheduled lives, their kids in three different activities every season, who never have time to attend parties because little Johnny has a soccer game.  I still ridicule them, but I realize now how difficult it is, realistically, not to be them.

I want my children to have the opportunity to try things.  I want them to be around other kids and develop strong social skills.  But damn, that takes a lot of friggin' time!

Last year was the first time the girls were really involved in structured activities.  At seven- and eight-years-old, I figured I'd put it off for as long as I could.  M did chorus, year-round swim team, and art classes.  G did gymnastics and Indian Princesses.  So we jumped in with both feet, arms, hands, legs, what have you...  I rationalized.  Chorus was before school one day a week so no big deal.  Gymnastics and art class were both on Tuesday evening, so two birds with one stone.  Year-round swimming was two nights a week and we could pick and choose and it was only for 45 minutes.  Indian Princesses was sporadic - maybe once every two weeks at best.

Ha.

So .... I wasn't crying when M decided to drop swimming after her initial, required three-month commitment.  And I won't deny I did a little dance when G broke her arm at the Spring Outing and had to drop the last month of gymnastics (I filled out that cancellation form faster than a squirrel on crack).

In late May, art classes ended for the season and we had a breather.  In June, summer swim started up  which required practice three- to- four nights a week plus meets every Tuesday evening but it only lasted until mid-July.  And then, I reasoned, we were done and we wouldn't make the same (over)scheduling mistakes again.

Now, here it is, late July and I have found that I am wrong, wrong, wrong!

Here's where it all went awry - I signed up G for gymnastics on Saturday mornings. How smart!  No after-school homework conflicts.  M will be taking art on Thursdays at 4:30 pm (if the instructor ever calls me back but I digress - that's another story) which allows me to drop her off right after school, head to my part-time job, then have her dad pick her up an hour later on his way home from work.  No problem!

But wait.  M is also going to try Tae Kwan Do this year, which is on Tuesdays and Fridays at 7:00 pm.  Granted, it's right across the street from our neighborhood, but it's still taking up time on our schedule.  And ... we still haven't decided about chorus for M this year.  And ... we're now a "seasonal" family, meaning we have an activity going on every stinking season.

How... Did... This... Happen??????

And yet, I tell myself, I should do this for my girls.  I must.  Because even though my particular parents didn't participate in this nonsense, it doesn't mean that it wasn't still going on back then.  We didn't participate because my mom ran a home daycare and couldn't spend all of her time running us around.  And, because my rather old-school father wanted the family home in the evenings, with dinner waiting on the table.  Part of me can't blame him at all (see my rantings during the whole first part of this post).  But then part of me believes that maybe if I'd been allowed to do some activities myself, I wouldn't have been quite so shy, I might have been more motivated in school, I might have been better off.

What I want is to find a happy medium between no participation at all and the balls to the wall craziness that comprises travel softball, travel soccer, multiple activities starting from the age of two, or any other sort of all-consuming activities that cause parents to forget that they are, in addition to being parents, a family unit as well, and that family unit has lots of other aspects to it outside of the kids' enrichment needs.

We'll see if I can achieve that happy medium.  Until then, deep breaths, deep breaths, deep breaths.

I attended mass on Sunday, during which time a priest for whom I do not particularly care, utilized the homily to tell me how I should vote, and that I should, if my children expressed that they thought they were gay, try to turn them back toward heterosexuality.

I am disappointed, though not surprised, that the Catholic Church, or any church, feels they have the right to dictate how I vote, and more disappointed that they care more about admonishing homosexuality than teaching love and tolerance.  Through recent actions of priests in regard to homosexuality, such as a priest who denied a lesbian the right to receive communion at her mother's funeral mass, they are portraying themselves more as an institution of hate.  If they wish to view homosexuals as not living in a state of grace, and therefore choose to deny the sacraments to them, I suppose that is their choice, though an unfortunate one, and one that does not apparently apply to their own clergy.  But they have no business attempting to browbeat their parishioners in an attempt to dictate public policy.  There is a very good reason why our founding fathers encouraged the separation of church and state.

On another note, Father Buckler should pay more attention to the number of parishioners who routinely walk out on his homilies because of his dismal failure to communicate to them with respect, or in a way that relates the homily in any way to our daily lives.  He has angered and alienated more people than I care to admit.  Perhaps he should consider that the priesthood is not his true calling.  

A Story Excerpt

Orange-red embers pulsed and flickered in the bottom of the copper saucer, now dirty, dented and stained from exposure to the elements over the course of several years.  The last remnants of the fire still shared some heat, warming the man’s legs as he sat, transfixed, in the warm November night.  He poked at it occasionally with a stick, startling the dog that lay in the leaves next to him. 

“Go back to bed Charlie,” he mumbled, and the dog dutifully laid its head back down on the ground, though its ears still perked up occasionally as it parsed out the sounds beyond camp – leaves falling with each gust of wind, crickets chirping, an animal sneaking through the shadows.

Above the man and the dog a string of lights had been suspended between two trees and now, even with intermittent burnt out bulbs, they lit the perimeter satisfactorily, swaying in the pleasant, breeze.   He stared beyond them, at the silhouettes of leaves against the sky, wondering absently what planet was lit so brightly against the dark. Then he tilted his head to the left, looking into the distance at the milky blue-white illumination of the clouds, as the waning moon struggled to make itself seen.

A siren from a police car, or perhaps an ambulance, sounded in the background amidst a dull quiet roar of traffic noise.  He was never certain where that noise came from.  There wasn’t a major highway nearby – just Capital Boulevard, the main thoroughfare that brought folks out to the suburbs from downtown, and Main Street, a not-terribly-busy road either.  Neither were heavily traveled at night.  

Either way, it reminded him of Maryland where the house he grew up in had the same sound – the constant, dull roar of traffic from I-95 that ran several miles from his neighborhood.  It reminded him, too, of his grandparents’ house, off of Liberty Road, where he lay in their bed late into the night while the adults celebrated the holidays downstairs, and the noise was more constant and sirens were commonplace beyond their bedroom window.  It was oddly comforting to him.

He sighed, staring back at the fire, savoring the evening that was devoid of the day, devoid of progress, of electronics, of everything 21^st century.  Yet still, he felt compelled to pull out his phone just, he thought, to check the time.

A few moments later, perhaps because of the quickly approaching midnight hour or perhaps because the spell had broken, he decided the night must end.  He lifted himself out of the plastic Adirondack chair, poked the fire one more time, and threw his phone into it, before heading inside.  On his way, he unplugged the lights and called the dog, who lumbered along, nonplussed by the course of events.

Mornings

Well, school is back in session.  Track out has ended and here I find myself again, trying to regroup.  It's one thing I'm not sure I like about year round - the back and forth between lives - nine weeks in one mindset, three weeks in another.

In traditional calendar schools, one knows there will be one long summer break, and that is one life.  That is long, lazy summer days, endless time at the pool, kids home, lunches whenever, mornings in slow motion.  Then September comes and back to school and lunches and busy-ness that way and one can settle into it for a good nine months.

But in year-round it's constant motion and change.  Nine weeks in, time to get projects at home started and complete, lunches, papers, homework, field trips, volunteering, conferences, end of quarter celebrations, done.  Then kids home all the time and projects are put on hold.  A week easing into track out time, planning play dates around an ever-decreasing number of time slots in friends' busy lives, fitting in activities, packing and shopping for vacation, late nights for a short time, then easing quickly back to earlier bedtimes for track out ends in just a week, four days, tomorrow.

My head spins and it seems like as the kids get older, the time is quicker, crazier, busier.  I don't know that we ever really get to relax, not the way one does during summer vacation.

But then, isn't that the way the world goes now?  Few of us are fortunate enough to even be able to stay home.  This economy isn't very forgiving in matters of family time - it is nearly impossible to get by on one income and has been for a long time.  And for those of us who are able to (sort of) make it work, we still struggle to slow things down, if not for us, then for our kids, so that they might still, somehow, enjoy being a kid when the world is pushing them to be little adults.

That is my struggle with year-round in a nutshell.  Sure it's nice to have flexibility in vacation time, and it's nice for the kids to theoretically get a routine break, and sure, I'd probably get tired of the long summer days after a while.  But summer breaks force us all to slow down, remind us all to take a long deep breath, make us all learn to enjoy each other's company again.

Even in today's world where every kid is in a sport and parents enroll their children in travel leagues that become a whole family activity, and many families see both parents working, I can't help but feel that the year-round calendar complicates things, makes schedules crazier, imposes an unnecessary burden on our lives.  I wonder, in twenty years when society looks back and evaluates its success, what they will determine.