Even as I began making some plans the other day for what I would do this week and remarked to myself “I don’t have that much going on!,” I knew it wouldn’t last. Either because of jinxing myself or because life has a way of filling in the gaps, my moment of freedom was short-lived. I got a migraine followed in quick succession by Charlie catching a 24-hour vomit virus. Luckily no one else in the family caught it, but the laundry required by one child during such a night is astonishing. It really makes me pity the people who don’t have nearly industrial-sized front-loading washers waiting in their basements to do their sick clean-up bidding.
We’re all back in good spirits now, and I’ve returned to the sorting of the cold-weather and warm-weather clothes. This routine has a method: I find some clothes I truly hate–they seem to materialize out of nowhere, no?–and I stack them in the corner. Then when I come across an item I’m not sure I want to keep, I go over to the stack and sit the item on top. Immediately, I get a gut reaction that is either “Gross, it belongs there” or “Quick, pick it up, or it will be gone!” The key is that you actually have to walk it physically over to the stack, don’t just let it hang in the closet or sit in the drawer. The other key is you can’t listen to your brain’s hasty protests, like “I might wear these jeans to paint the house!” The irrational hoarding part of your brain doesn’t know what it’s talking about, for you will be far happier without the clutter than you would be if you kept those ugly jeans. I’m sharing my tip with Works for Me Wednesday, though I’m not sure this trick would work for anyone but me. But there you have it. Use it if you will.
So I guess I’m just checking in with the deets, but there’s not too much happening over here. What’s going on with you? Fill me in!
Yesterday we went on an impromptu picnic after picking up Vivi from school. We sat in the grass under a cherry tree and ate our store-bought tuna wraps in quiet satisfaction. Life burgeons all around us, and as happens so often to me as a mom, I want this moment to last forever. I try to stuff down that guilty feeling I get, wondering if I am enjoying them enough, because it is not a helpful feeling, and because I don’t think that part of me will ever be satisfied that I am truly relishing them as I should be. I get the same feeling about the spring blossoms; when I see them, I am both happy and guilty, somehow believing I am supposed to be getting a greater appreciation of them than just the joy I get in seeing them when I pass by.
I watch the girls frolicking in the woods, giggling because they spied a ladybug, and I am struck by how little they look. Satisfied they are still my babies, I turn my attention toward the sun and lie in the grass, eyes closed, to soak it in. Just at that moment and not a second later, Vivi yells “Mommy, my tooth is almost all the way out!,” thus breaking my brief truce with the marching of time. Of course her tooth would fall out now. Despite my silent protests, it seems they will keep growing.
I am not one to quote poetry often, but my resignation to life’s continual passing brings to mind that Virgil poem Georgics from which we get the phrase “Tempus fugit.” Here it is:
Sed fugit interea,
Fugit irreparabile tempus, Singula dum capti circumvectamur amore.
But meanwhile it flees: Time flees irretrievably,While we wander around, prisoners of our love of detail.