I had been anticipating summer since, well, Christmas - not because I love the 120 degree heat - but because summer held the promise of some much needed time.
During the school year, life is frankly NUTS around here. My weekdays routine is basically get up before the sun, swim, teach seminary, take kids to school, take more kids to school, prepare tomorrow's seminary lesson, pick up kids from school, pick up more kids from school, pick up the kids from after school programs, get the kids to do their homework and practice their instruments, make dinner, try to get everyone dressed and to taekwando, have dinner, get the kids to do their chores and finish homework, and fall into bed. And that is on the rare occasion that I am not driving kids to Young Men, scouts, piano lessons, the eternal dentist and ortho appointments....
The school year is really exhausting! (BTW, I always liked homework as a kid. Now I loathe it! Homework is pure evil - created, no doubt, by Satan to destroy families and my sanity!)
Oh, and next year will be way more fun with kids in 4 different schools. Yep. Preschool, elementary school, middle school, and high school. Oh, and don't forget Seminary. Good thing I have that beautiful plush luxury vehicle called the family Suburban to drive around in all day. A sweet ride! Yeah, baby! (We are running that car into the ground and fully expect it to conk out on us any day now. Then again, it just might outlast me, the way I am running myself into the ground.)
So summertime was going to be my salvation!
Needles to say, I was REALLY looking forward to summertime when frankly, I wouldn't have to do all that driving, and preparing seminary, and jumping down my kids' throats to do their homework. This was gonna be great!
I made plans. Oh, did I make plans.
I got a clipboard. The clipboard - the project clip board, and I got busy making my summertime plans. Not plans about summer vacations and fun things to do, but plans for the projects that I simply don't have time to get to in the school year and that I really NEED, and WANT to do. I have it broken into several categories: Projects I can do in an hour or two, projects that I can do in half a day, projects that will take a whole day, and larger, long term projects.
My plan was that I would try to do one project a day, starting with the ones that need my attention first, then moving onto to the ones that I have just been dying to get to.
Summer was going to be the perfect opportunity! After all, I have no seminary to prepare for, the kids are all home and don't need to be driven anywhere, and the older ones can watch the younger ones so I can actually get into my pink room and get busy with stuff. Perfectly laid plans, right?
No.
As it turns out, summer is nuts too. Here we are a full 6 weeks into summer, and how many projects have I gotten crossed off my clipboard? Exactly 3. THREE! (Well, actually 2 and 1/2, but I am almost finished with that last one - maybe in the next week or so.)
All three were from my "under 2 hour" list.
Apparently, when I laid out my summer project plans, I had forgotten one very crucial fact - Everybody needs me. EVERYBODY ALWAYS NEEDS ME.
Even when they think they don't.
My plans? What are my plans? Who am I to get to be able to make plans? Please. I am the mom, and fact is, the mom never gets to make her own plans. You'd think that I would have figured out that law of nature my now.
I just finished reading a non-fiction memoir called Eat, Pray, Love about a woman who didn't want to have children, left her husband for a relationship with another guy which she butchered too, then fell into depression because she was so lonely so she decided she needed to find herself and escaped her life for an entire year, eating to her hearts' content in Italy, meditating in an Ashram in India, and finally finding love in a Balinese paradise. Then she wrote a best-selling book about it, and now Julia Roberts is playing her in the feature film. Well la-de-dah. Good for her.
This book really sticks in my craw!
For one thing, it is all about her. All of it. Trotting around Rome doing whatever she darn well pleases, then off to India where she spends most of her waking hours sitting silently in a cave trying, and succeeding apparently, to commune with God, then finally off to Bali where she describes how she was living a perfect life - spending her mornings with a holy man learning about God, then her afternoons chatting with friends, than her evenings having tea and reading books in a garden paradise. How nice. There was only one, count it, ONE selfless thing she did in the entire book. ONE. In a years' time. Seriously. How many selfless things, as a mom, or any mom for that matter, do we do in a day?
She spends the whole book whining about how depressed and lonely she is and how she needs to find god. I'm thinking she didn't need to travel all around the world to find god and start feeling better about herself - she just needed to get over herself, get off her tail, and go serve food to the homeless in a soup kitchen. Just saying...
She was actually quite pathetic.
I think I'll write a book called Eat, Pray, Love, and Work Your Tail Off For Those You Love. I wonder if Julia Roberts would play me? No thanks.
I LOVE my family, and that is why I serve them. And I EAT plenty, maybe a bit too much, only I have to cook most of it myself. And I have already found my God that I PRAY to, and I love Him, and that is why I work so hard to serve him too. I am so grateful that I have a religion that teaches that you find yourself by serving others, and that you find God in the very same process - NOT by holing yourself up in a cave. I still eat, I still pray, and I have a whole lot of love around me as I serve them. OK, so I am not living in an island paradise, but I am living in a better paradise, a loving family, and adoring husband, and kids who hug me and call me beautiful. Now that is the life - albeit a crazy busy one!
Truth is, summer will end (quite soon!) and most of my list will remain undone, school will start, and then the holidays, and then I'll be looking forward again to all the time and freedom summer will promise to bring me- which it won't. My life is just crazy, and busy, and always will be. My lists and plans will never all get done.
(Dennis and the 4 older boys just drove off to scout camp about an hour ago, so maybe I can get something crossed of the list this week. I'll sure try!)
So though my plans have to be continually set aside for the sake of everyone else, and I do mean everyone, there is one plan of mine that is right on target, my best laid plan, and that is my plan to be with my family eternally - in a place SO much better than Bali!
4 comments:
I am so glad you read that book for us. I almost read and/or went and saw it, and I'm glad I didn't. You're such a time saver for the rest of us, you know.
We need you and your opinions at book club. You must cancel whatever you have on Wednesday and come. I was so curious to hear what you thought. My last book club did Eat, Love, Pray in NY and it was the best discussion ever.
I didn't read it but it was one of our book club books. At least you have more than 6 weeks of summer. That;s all I get and it is not enough. My kids start school MOnday.
Great post! Amen to everything you said. Your kids will be grown up and gone before you know it. Alex is starting HS this year. That means he won't be with you much longer. Nathan is right behind him.
I promise you that when they are gone, and you are alone, working on your projects, in that big house and missing them, you will not regret one minute you spent with them, or spent doing things for them. You have wonderful, exceptional, sweet and loving boys. How blessed you are. Keep up the good work.
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