Monday To-Do List

I woke up this morning with a pinched sciatic nerve and a gray sky overhead and the knowledge that Paul will be home late from work today. And, although this makes me feel like crawling back into bed and watching movies all day, that is obviously not an option.

So the question is, what will this Monday be?

Is this the day I tackle all the to-do list items that I've been ignoring and re-writing on a new to-do list every day? Because that's how I feel I accomplish things, by crossing them off my daily list and simply re-writing them on another, cleaner, newer list. Some of you may scoff at me writing lists at all, but what can I say, I crave some sense of order, however manufactured.

Is this the day I let Elliot watch Sesame Street while I spend some time writing and reading and knitting? Thereby pretending that I have free time?

Is this the day for running errands and going shopping for yet another pair of shoes for Owen's rapidly growing, long, lean and tall feet?

Is this the day that Elliot and I go find a corner of our world that we haven't explored recently, and spend hours turning over rocks and shells in the overcast gray?

The possibilities are there... and, perversely, that gray sky is making me feel open to whatever might come my way.

My New To-Do List:
1. Breathe.
2. Enjoy the moment.
3. Get outside.

I'll start with these three.

Favorite Part of the Day

Well, one of them....

It certainly doesn't happen every day, but sometimes when everything falls into place, the twilight hour is golden. I'm in the kitchen cooking dinner and I look out into the kitchen into our yard and see Owen and Elliot just... playing. They're playing no recognizable game, with no rules and no requirements, and neither of them stop moving for an instant, and I can hear the conversation dribbling in through the open door...



I love this time of day.

Wordless Wednesday

Time

Have you heard the story about the hummingbird and the turtle crossing the backyard? For the turtle, the journey takes 5 hours. For the hummingbird, the journey takes 5 seconds. Time passes differently for each of them because the rhythm of their lives -- their heartbeats -- is at such a different pace. For each of them, time has a completely different yet completely true meaning.

I was thinking about Time today, what with all the Springing Forward we did over the weekend. We certainly loved our extra hour of daylight yesterday -- eating an early dinner and then running and jumping on the grassy beach path until the sun finally sank below the distant Pacific horizon. We watched the surfers become dark specks in the water as we walked slowly back to our car dreaming of the even longer days yet to come.

The rhythm of my days has certainly changed over the past 7 years. Chasing after children and multi-tasking the management of day to day disasters and distresses has, of course, been a large part of my life's tempo. But then there are moments during the day where time seems to stop and we notice how the sun shines, and the birds sing, and we realize we are truly IN THE MOMENT. We may be digging in the garden, or reading a book in the sunbeams bursting through the boys' window, or we may be sitting at the table doing puzzles or coloring or painting, but time seems to treat us differently in those moments.

I think it's impossible to live that way completely, really. There are too many checklists to be crossed off and too many chores and tasks to finish in order to smooth our travels through each day.

But then I wonder, how would I fill my days if I had all the time in the world? Probably, I wouldn't do much different than right now, IN THIS MOMENT.