I have a strong and perpetual instinct to just sit still. I’m sure this is inextricably bound with my endless preoccupation with how fast time is passing. I relentlessly under-program my children during the school year, and I say no to far more things than I say yes to. My favorite story about my antisocial hermetic tendencies remains the one about sitting next to a dear friend’s husband at a dinner party. He asked me something about plans and I said that I usually said no because I compared everything to sitting at home with a book in bed and 9 times out of 10 the book and bed seemed more appealing. I guess, on reflection, it’s no surprise that he was a bit taken aback by that answer!
But now I feel like I’m perched at the top of a tall roller coaster, feel as though this summer feels like it’s about to unfurl at dizzying speed. I look through the weeks between now and Labor Day, which signals the beginning of school and my new job, and each one is full of something. Other than this week and next. There is Legoland, there is YMCA camp in Marion, there is time in Vermont, etc, etc. There is BlogHer! I feel anxiety rising in my chest when I think about this schedule, feel literal tightness of breath.
I have been guided by my eagerness to jam pack this summer with memories for the kids, by my wild determination to take advantage of this time off. These are good instincts, I really believe that. But now I feel that sense of vague dread that I feel before something difficult, or something intense, sort of the night-before-a-final feeling. I let my mind drift to my to-do list, which includes small things like the pesky dentist appointments and big things like finding a new nanny, and I start to feel slightly panicky.
I’m trying to remind myself that this time will never come again. That I even need reminding about this seems preposterous: I hardly think of anything else, and that truth throbs like a drumbeat inside my head most of the day. I also try to remind myself that within each of these trips there will be tremendous downtime. In Marion for a week I’ll be on the back porch with my laptop. At Lake Champlain, ditto. There will be plenty of time for writing, reading, thinking. For moments like this one, where I sit on my bed with Whit resting silently next to me, almost catatonic with exhaustion and remarkably, charmingly docile. And all of the programming for the kids is actually very relaxed. And these are the days. Right?
I think what I’m really anxious about is the next transition that looms, back to Real Life, to a job and school and all of those routines that I was so scared of letting go of in the first place. Just as I settle into the rhythm of this summer, the next disruption, the next earthquake, begins to darken the horizon. I know what the Zen priest I cannot wait to meet in Boston (September 18! Yippee!) would say to me, and I try to heed it. Here. Now. It’s all I have anyway
I suspect, too, that I’m aware the larger arc of time. After all, this time in my life is surely the moment of full summer. I know that, and I am trying mightly to drink it in. But I fear so desperately the fall, the knowledge of which lurks around every single moment. There is already an elegy in the evening light, because I know we have already turned back towards the darkness.
How to honor this and not let it swamp me? I do not know.
I don’t know either.
The biggest plans on my calendar involve you! BlogHer and the Mother’s Plunge (aside from Paige’s birthday…) and even those two things fill me with excitement and a bit of dread. That feeling you described oh so well. Any big thing has me feeling that way.
And you’ve got so many big things going on. Trips are always big, even if they’re meant to be relaxing. But the process is always tiring.
And those moments are the ones that are hard to own, to live within. The transitions are hardest – I think you’ve mentioned that several times, and in this summer you have so many transitions. Not just the big ones – but the ones to get from one daily adventure to the next.
Hang in there, friend.
You just breathe, I think. And take it one small thing at a time. Whatever brought you here will get you there…
As we spiral back again to the ever present moment, I’m going to get in bed with a book right now.
I really appreciate what you say and how you say it; I so relate to the dread before big plans, changes… that never quite going away finals feeling.
However we frame it, I send good wishes and equanimity for both the moments of stillness and the adventures as well (and the the intersection of the two when we’re lucky).
OK, how about this suggestion, based on what we did last night.
Go see Toy Story 3. (And, if at all possible, I would recommend seeing it at a Drive-in, like we did.) Let yourself get all absorbed in the story, and then weep it all out like a silly baby, like I did.
Someday our kids are going to outgrow not only their most-loved toys (and Storyland. And Legoland.) But their very childhoods, and, I couldn’t help realizing, us as well.
I say this not to ease your pain, but to sharpen it to the point where you have to bawl, which always feels better.
(And yay on the lack of scheduling.)
L
In this, like so many other things, we are kindred spirits. I enjoy nothing more than a quiet night in with a favourite drink, my laptop to write or a great book to read and endless hours ahead of me to just sit quiety and enjoy. Alas my boys are still so very young and so very active and this is not always possible. We have definite goals that keep us from overprogramming them or from catapulting them into situations where there are unnecessary expectations. But I think it’s important to be mindful of the importance of living too, of experiencing life so that down the road you don’t feel as though you missed something. It’s a fine balance as so much is, one that I am still trying to find myself.
You are sitting on the cusp of change and that’s hard, it’s hard and tends to make us want to hold on to what we know. But living is also about embracing change even though it can be so hard. It’s terrificly hard not knowing.
As an aside, I can’t wait to meet you in New York!
pure magic, lindsey. beautiful prose about soulful truths. even though i have been here before (filled with doubt and dread) and moved around the corner into the new safely. even though. right now, i too feel fearful of the ‘darkening horizon’. and thus, i dance. literally. i move my body (and then i sit still with book in bed).
“Antisocial hermetic tendencies.” I love this! And I understand. There are such expectations for summer activities, and sometimes, we want to sit, allow the silence to let us “be.”
I love how you have led us through this thought process, and yes, the way time inevitably seeps into expectations for ourselves, for next stages, a sort of nostalgia that hits before we leave one, as we begin to prepare for another.