Laundry, permission slips, school lunches, art supplies, driving lessons. Another SAT registration. More credit debt.
Writing. More writing. Unpaid bills, unopened mail. Researching scholarships, colleges, college visits. Leaky roof, broken mower, burnt-out printer, dying cell phone. And?
I’m dancing as fast as I can
More writing, more writing, more writing. Another dose to fight anxiety, then another to quell worry; worry bubbling up out of the words that are never enough, sharp enough, jutting enough, strong enough to help me up and out of the well. Or into clarity, beyond the jumble of days and nights speeding by, one nearly indistinguishable from the next, just another flavor of older days: all-nighters for school papers, corporate projects, colicky infants, newspaper deadlines. But this is somehow more, harder, heavier, sluggish, this continuum of daily grind. This daily, daily, daily crazy. How many thousands of days? Four thousand? Eight thousand? Why?
Promises to keep
I promised myself. This. To write daily. Here. In this unknown place that I entered innocently, now so familiar, never knowing that a “you who read” would materialize, ignorant of your power, your individuality, your friendship, your wisdom.
I promised myself that I would squeeze words out of my morning musing laid to the paper page for many years, words cobbled together, compressed hastily into sense and nonsense, scratching out questions, my own lessons, the sweetness of a good day, the bitterness of a bad one. And the shambles of sleepless nights, too often, too many, in my over-caffeinated, hurried, never-enough-of-everything state – words not crisp enough (actions not definitive enough), sentences not potent enough (strategies not effective enough), dropping the ball, scurrying to pick it up, and then another and another and juggling them all in the air laughing to entertain the troops, my troops, as I now stand on one foot for the twinkle in their eyes, now hopping, now grinning wider, hopping faster, and faster, and faster. 
Never fast enough.
But I’m writing as fast as I can!
I look up, because I am asked to look up. I look up because I sense, somehow, that the little hand on the kitchen clock has spun forward six hours, again, as I dropped into a parallel universe while writing.
And the pounding in my chest? The jittery legs?
Thoughts scramble and bounce: E to M to C and back again to M and C – whatever happened to the line segment, A to B? Whatever happened to time?
Spin cycle
The laundry is spinning, my head is spinning, the hours are falling away, I forget to eat, my gut is in knots, my son needs blending stumps, charcoal, another tube of titanium white, more money, that damn driving lesson… how did I manage two children alone all these years?
My mental task list is barely half attacked. So I write more, faster, pounding out whatever shoots onto the keyboard, knowing it will need a tidy nip-tuck into cohesive form when the brain eases off the accelerator, relinquishing the wheel to more mechanical editing skills. Cerebellum, fingers, lap. Coffee.
I flash for an instant to babies, house, jobs, schools, carpool, homework help, walking the dog, deadlines, the spin cycle, another load, always another load and my own voice screaming for just a little time to step off the merry-go-round, and rest. Outside my own limbs. Outside my own head.
I catch on the cogs of my life now, still, my crazy Catch-22s, my crazy everything, beyond my control, self-imposed, ruefully, ruthlessly, driven by survival. Only it’s 10 years later and I know I’m writing as fast as I can but now deadlines become habit and there’s another, and another, and it feels like I’m headed straight into the red zone.
And then, epiphany. Dead. Line. And I stop.
And. I. Take. A. Breath.
Parenting is a rush. A spectacular rush. A crazy rush. A wild ride. Single parenting is chaotic, calamitous, a precarious series of compromises and conundrums – more complex than any of us can imagine before the dire deed is done. Perhaps it’s better we never knew.
But here’s the drill. Occasionally, we look up. The clock spurs us on, our children spur us on, we spiral faster into the blur, one with the blur, years dropping away slowly, quickly, alarmingly, numbingly. Then something happens.
Slow down, you move too fast
Something causes us to stop. To look inward. To step back, and then look inward. We see, we feel, we are aware of emotion and physical sensation. Acceptance and terror. Gratitude and compassion. Occasionally, in the shadow of another’s heartbreak we gain perspective. A phone call, an email from a friend, a blog post. A life of courage and humor that is on the line. Life and death. Whatever we experience, however brutally it thrashes us about, most of the time it isn’t life and death. In our blur, our flurry, our screaming at the top of our lungs to stay afloat, we forget that immeasurably important detail. 
Because life is precious, family is precious, and terrible things occur in wonderful lives, pointlessly. And we are struck dumb. The screen goes blank. Words stop. We stop.
Yesterday, well-known mommy blogger Anissa Mayhew, 35 years old, mother of three, suffered a second stroke. As if life with a child fighting cancer is not enough for one family. She is – from the latest I could find online – still fighting, but I haven’t found more updates yet this morning.
When I fell upon this bit of news last evening, everything ceased: my mental churning at 300mph, the sixth cup of coffee, the fingers flying on the keyboard. I stopped, and listened to my son work through Chopin on the piano, meticulously, repetitively, patiently. Reaching for just the right phrasing, just the right tone from each key. I was, briefly, “present.”
An event whispered: slow down, you move too fast. This isn’t life or death. And there are children still at play. Navigate carefully. Balance momentum, and the moment.
Stop, look, listen, slow…
Years do pass faster now. I feel them passing, even as I write as fast as I can, run as fast as I can, sleep as fast as I can in a great game of catch-up in order to survive. As fast as I can? Shouldn’t I want to survive – and thrive – as slowly as I can?
- Are you racing and chasing through your days and nights?
- When does the everyday circus become life and death, or feel that way?
- How do you quiet yourself when your nature is anything but tranquil?
This morning, there is perspective. The faces of my sons. Their reliance on me. The need for me to be here. I slow my fingers, my breathing. We will be late today. It is alright that we will be late.
I am thinking all good thoughts for Anissa and her family. Please, whatever you believe, think and feel your good thoughts for her, for her children, for her husband. Slow your schedules. Troubles aren’t life and death. Hardship is not tragedy.
Updates on Anissa via CaringBridge.org, as of this morning. (Thank you, to Okay, Fine, Dammit.)
Updates on Anissa are now being posted by her husband, Peter – here (11/21/09).
I know this doesn’t answer your questions, but reading your honest and brutal recap of the single parenting helps me understand my mother, who raised my two sisters and I on her own beginning when my eldest sister was 5.
Also, I try my best to stay in the moment but it never fails that something horrible makes me realize I’m still mentally moving too fast. I wish it didn’t happen, and my prayers are with Anissa, her family, and all the families out there dealing with tragedies.
I heard about this yesterday–so sad! I felt sick just reading it.
And I did just what you did; I made myself STOP. And enjoy my kids. I actually BAKED. Gingerbread, if you care to know. And we ate it together and the house smelled like the holidays.
And then this morning I’m back to rushing around. Thanks for bringing me back to Earth today.
Thank you for this beautiful post and reminder to be present.
Still praying for Anissa…
Thank you for this.
“An event whispered: slow down, you move too fast. This isn’t life or death. And there are children still at play. Navigate carefully. Balance momentum, and the moment.”
And this.
“Slow your schedules. Troubles aren’t life and death. Hardship is not tragedy.”
Because it is only our health. And the health of our families. That is the most crucial. If we aren’t alive there is no living to do.
I needed this.
Your frantic energy has become clearer in the past couple of days. I hear more simplicity. More clarity. It is so good.
Yes – the moment. It doesn’t last long. Times like these bring you back to that importance.
I completely understand what you wrote. I feel like you took what was in my head and put it to words. A year ago a friend of my son’s passed away from cancer. He was 10 years old. This forced me to stop and really look at my life and to begin enjoying the simple pleasures.
Thank you for the post and I will be praying for Anissa and her family.
When I had my 4th child as a single mom of three already, it was when I had to stop to nurse her that I realized how valuable those ‘forced breaks’ were. I was feeding my child and at the same time I was feeding my soul. I learned that the world didn’t end when I sat on the couch for an hour and let myself enjoy the moment while giving my child exactly what she needed. And found it was what I needed too.
I am profoundly grateful to you for this post – an important reminder of the fleeting nature of time and a call to remember to engender each moment with meaning.
I have a theory about time. When we are young, it seems to pass slowly (anyone else remember church services or math classes feeling positively endless?) because each hour comprises a relatively large percentage of our lives lived up to that point. As we age, and our hours of experience increase, each moment represents a relatively smaller percentage of our lives. Time seems like it’s worth less, just another measure of speed. And maybe that’s why we forget to cherish it.
How do we reset the balance, make the living of each moment slow down enough to be worthy of remembrance? I wish I knew. I really wish I did.
Slowing down is a good thing. If you can really slow down, and immerse yourself in the present moment, and really be there in all its depth – the moment can stretch on forever. Time really does slow down.
Thank you for this dramatic, hurried, dizzying, utterly exquisite reminder to press pause. Life is short and precarious and cruel. There will always be something to do. Always. It will never be fast enough. Or good enough. But that is okay. We must slow. We must stop. We owe it to ourselves and each other. Thanks for this. I will now go on with my day, shrouded in this cloak of slippery awareness, hoping for good things, miraculous things, for a woman and a family I don’t know. And, now, thanks to your jeweled words, artfully and honesty cobbled together, I will take the time, the time I didn’t think I have, the time I do have, to revel in the people I do know. And love.
Thank you.
Often I say to myself, “no she can’t surpass herself — the way she writes, the way she connects, the way her mind works.” And then you do.
Today is an extraordinary post. I never really have the words at hand, at mind to explain what I wish I could say to you.
Your writing is magnificent, insightful, thought-provoking. I can’t stand the idea it’s not in a book for us to keep and hold and treasure.
And, yes, I promise I will think of Anissa. How terrible it is that such tragedy makes us put our crazed lives into perspective.
Off subject, but not quite: American universities love children who are bilingual. Usually it equals some kind of scholarship. Maybe a tiny comfort for you today?
Tishxo
Thank you for the words. I know the feelings of single parenthood. While it is different for everyone, some parts of it never change.
I had this reminder last week when a friend told me of a child, a young special child in middle school, dying and the effect the death was having on all those whose lives the child had touched.
I continue to pray for Anissa, her family and her friends. I pause because it is so necessary.
BLW, this is a remarkable piece of writing. Are you by nature a poet? I haven’t read all your posts, but there are parts of this that speak with a power that simply isn’t available in prose. I know this isn’t the kind of discussion you had in mind here, but the quality of your writing deserves attention.
That said, the blur of your existence is beyond my ability to imagine. But I have had occasional periods of intensity (I just came home from one today) that left me hungering for something more and different.
And when that “more and different” finally arrives it is almost always in the form of overlooked miracles that seem so common that we don’t notice them. Your child playing Chopin is–suddenly–no longer the background noise to a busy household; it is a coming together in one place, one moment–in your own living room, one of the finest achievements in the history of all mankind. And it is carried along by your flesh.
Blessings on you Big Little Wolf. Always.
There have been so many times that I have wished that time would move slower and faster at the same time. I wanted to fast forward through the horrible pregnancies. I also wanted time to slow down so I could enjoy my time with my husband, and daughter, before baby came.
No matter how much I have tried, time still seems to race at a break neck pace. However, those moments that you have described, those moments when time seems suspended, serve to remind me that time is precious.
Single parenthood is a dual responsibility. I admire you. I am sure you feel you lack in many things, but I bet your boys appreciate how much you do. Even if they don’t show it, they are teenagers : ).
My heart and prayers go out to Anissa and her family.
You grabbed my heart and made me stop. It is almost too much. Except that it is so important. The moment. Thank you. Thank you.
“i don’t know how you do it” (unoriginal, but heartfelt)! keep writing!
Mr. Frost….
The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
but I have promises to keep,
and miles to go before I sleep,
and miles to go before I sleep.
Ms Dickinson….
Because I could not stop for death,
he kindly stopped for me,
The carriage held but just ourselves,
and immortality.
We slowly drove,
he knew no haste,
and I had put away,
my labor and my leisure too,
For his civility.
Sorry, your headlines in the post evoked these lines from me.
Pecan Pie in response to your last comment. 🙂
We only ever really have the moment we are in. We do not know what the next moment will bring. When I am busy, I really wish that I could slow down to enjoy some of the little things. When things are slow, I feel like there are things I should be doing.
I went back and read this post this morning – I had marked it when I first read it, wanting to go back when I had more time (as caught as I was in the rush on the original day).
I love your words, I just love them – they speak so profoundly to where I am right now, the reminder that we ought to stop now and then, look around, really SEE. Isn’t it sad, in a way, that it often takes some kind of tragic event to startle us into being? How much are we missing as the days flip by?
This is an absolute preoccupation of mine right now, and I am thankful for the articulate and gorgeous way you describe your thoughts on it.
Thank you.
I found your link at Almighty Dad. I enjoyed your post. Sorry to hear about Anissa and I am praying for her and her family.
Although I am married, my husband and I live 3.5 hours from each other (I will be blogging about this soon) so I am functioning as a single mom of 3 for now and the unforeseeable future. I so understand where you are coming from because I have committed to writing daily on top of working 2 jobs and trying to be present at least some of the time for my kids. None of us are guaranteed tomorrow and we should all make the most of today. Thank you for the reminder.