Summer vacation is just a few weeks away, and with it comes the springtime rush of school events, playoffs, year-end parties, concerts, dance recitals, closing meetings, teacher gifts, and last days. Preschool is over, routines are disrupted, schedules are ever-changing, and I am in a perpetual state of confusion. Are we winding down, or winding up?
Every morning I ask myself the four W’s: Who has a classroom visit, field trip, concert, graduation, field day, meeting? What are we supposed to wear, bring, sign, buy? Where am I going (and where will I park)? When do I have to be there (especially if I want a place to park)? And of course, the one H - How am I going to be at this, that and the other thing all at once?
Usually about halfway through the morning, I go through this process anew, starting with “What day is it again?” I review how the week is going to play out so often in my mind that sometimes I think I’ve finished a day, but I’m still in the first quarter. Other times it is still two days away.
I try to program the calendar on my phone to beep with reminders and alerts ahead of time. Still, I spend most afternoons worried that I’ve forgotten someone or something. But I figure if nobody is calling, I must be okay.
Of course, one rescheduled field day, and things start tumbling like a row of dominoes. For a moment, I enjoy the unexpected free time, but then I start to wonder how do I move those three hours to the next week?
Around this time of year, I start to think that each year is passing faster than the previous one. Perhaps the earth’s rotation is actually speeding up and nobody is telling us? This year in particular has been an especially confusing blur in our house due to an unusual amount of sick days and resulting doctor appointments disrupting every other week. In addition to seven antibiotic prescriptions, we have endured weird ailments like fire ant bites, a nasty sunburn acquired in the rain, and severe poison ivy on one who barely even walks through the grass. I’m blaming it all on the unlucky “13” in 2013, but regardless of what is to blame, the result has been day after day that did not go as scheduled. Add to that the cool weather patterns that kept us in a perpetual state of March throughout May, and June just snuck up on me.
So here we are, on a mad dash to the end of the school year, every minute planned with events overlapping. It’s been the first year where my husband and I have had to split up, each taking one child to an event, and the other having to miss it (old hat for you sports parents, I know).
Was I the only one cheering the miserable weather early on Memorial Day weekend, leaving us with nothing to do but hunker down with the family and stay home? It was so refreshing for my crew to have no deadlines and rush to nowhere.
In the midst of the flurry, the day-to-day is still occurring. But the mundane tasks are starting to take a backseat. The house is messier, the laundry is piling up, and there’s an awful lot of takeout in the fridge. Though I know it’s not true, it feels like the learning portion of the school year is over and I’m already looking ahead to the next. Checking homework, reviewing papers, and packing lunches have been pushed aside to focus instead on ordering school supplies, anticipating new teachers, and considering Fall activities.
My kids are ready for summer, and as a parent, I am ready too. Ready to sleep in a little, no frantic rush to the busstop. Ready to give the chauffeuring a rest and swap the backpacks for beach totes. But unlike the kids, my excitement will last for about a week. Then the days get long again, oh so long (wait, maybe that’s how that Earth rotation thing balances out).
I’d better find a minute this week to find those camp registration forms that have been buried in my to-do pile, forgotten in the recent chaos. Otherwise, what are we going to do with all that free time?
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
Paper Drive
Paper. I’m drowning in it. Newspapers to be read, bills to be paid, statements to be filed, greeting cards received and notes to be sent, forms to be completed, homework pages, art projects, flyers, catalogs, and school notices.
I do all the “organizer” tricks to reduce the burden as much as I can. I open my mail over a recycle bin and toss the junk immediately. I have action files, storage files, and bins for each family member. But still, I can’t get ahead of it. My “to do” bin includes everything I have planned to order online for the past year, upcoming birthday cards, and recall notices for appliance and car parts that I really mean to follow up on. I usually make the biggest dent in that pile when I am throwing out all the items with missed deadlines.
My stress around this issue heightens when I remember all the piles hidden around the house that I promise I’m “going to get to someday.” The first four years of my son’s elementary school experience that balance in his closet, culled through once but hardly with enough of a discerning eye (I’m doing better with child #2). The stacks of magazines living on bedside tables that have outlived their relevancy – like the Entertainment Weekly Fall 2010 TV Season Preview and a guide to the Harry Potter movies. The outdated travel books, grad school textbooks (still relevant in my field?), and files that clutter bookshelves ideally suited for orderly binders and office supplies. In my mind, the trash is out and the rest is all in its perfect place, but only in my mind.
I recently read Nicole Bernier’s novel, “The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D”, in which a woman learns about her friend’s hidden life through journals left behind after her death. This reminded me that I also have my own private papers squirreled away. Old school papers, journals from my childhood and young adult years, letters from friends and old boyfriends, yearbooks, programs, and random souvenirs. Until recently I thought, “These are my memories, reminders of experiences that made me who I am today, of course I will keep them!” But then I started to wonder, “Do I want my kids and husband reading these?” Thinking back to the content from my early twenties I thought, “Um…..probably not.”
So I pulled out these papers that were so essential to my “self.” I expected to find notebooks detailed with tales of exciting times and racy adventures, misbehaviors I’d never want my children to repeat, love letters to rival Fifty Shades of Grey. Well, it seems like that was somebody else’s life, not mine. I definitely found papers that I don’t want my family to read but not because they are scandalous. Because they are just embarrassing. Journaling was done sporadically and mostly captured ridiculous drama behind pseudo-relationships that I am grateful did not endure. Friends write of private jokes that no longer make any sense. Old boyfriends’ letters were cringe-worthy. Still, I can’t just toss them. Maybe I’ll keep some of these papers and draw black lines through anything incriminating, censoring them like wartime letters and government documents. Then at least it will look like I had something to hide.
Ironically, as I was writing this, I received a box of mementos from my father consisting mostly of unexpected gems from my transition to adulthood, from dependent child to successful woman to married mom. Letters from college asking for money. A lengthy treatise soliciting understanding of some unconventional after-college plans which I do not recall, nor did they ever come to fruition. (No surprise - I am pretty conventional.) There was the first business letter I wrote at my first (conventional) corporate job, and reviews from my employers and my staff. I don’t remember sharing these things, but they seemed to serve as an adult “report card” of sorts, and I was touched to see that he was proud enough to save them. But in reading them, I felt a little melancholy caught between laughing at my younger ideal self and longing for a past identity I barely even remember.
My two young children bring home dozens of papers every week. I try to sort through them as they come in and now I wonder if what I save reflects my children or my vision of them and what I want them to be. Would they choose to save the same things? Will they look back at these piles and remember who they were or will a giant piece be lost? Also, is it wrong to keep every item that says “I love you mom” to look at during those moments when it is hard to tell?
One thing I know, it’s time to get a bigger bin.
I do all the “organizer” tricks to reduce the burden as much as I can. I open my mail over a recycle bin and toss the junk immediately. I have action files, storage files, and bins for each family member. But still, I can’t get ahead of it. My “to do” bin includes everything I have planned to order online for the past year, upcoming birthday cards, and recall notices for appliance and car parts that I really mean to follow up on. I usually make the biggest dent in that pile when I am throwing out all the items with missed deadlines.
My stress around this issue heightens when I remember all the piles hidden around the house that I promise I’m “going to get to someday.” The first four years of my son’s elementary school experience that balance in his closet, culled through once but hardly with enough of a discerning eye (I’m doing better with child #2). The stacks of magazines living on bedside tables that have outlived their relevancy – like the Entertainment Weekly Fall 2010 TV Season Preview and a guide to the Harry Potter movies. The outdated travel books, grad school textbooks (still relevant in my field?), and files that clutter bookshelves ideally suited for orderly binders and office supplies. In my mind, the trash is out and the rest is all in its perfect place, but only in my mind.
I recently read Nicole Bernier’s novel, “The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D”, in which a woman learns about her friend’s hidden life through journals left behind after her death. This reminded me that I also have my own private papers squirreled away. Old school papers, journals from my childhood and young adult years, letters from friends and old boyfriends, yearbooks, programs, and random souvenirs. Until recently I thought, “These are my memories, reminders of experiences that made me who I am today, of course I will keep them!” But then I started to wonder, “Do I want my kids and husband reading these?” Thinking back to the content from my early twenties I thought, “Um…..probably not.”
So I pulled out these papers that were so essential to my “self.” I expected to find notebooks detailed with tales of exciting times and racy adventures, misbehaviors I’d never want my children to repeat, love letters to rival Fifty Shades of Grey. Well, it seems like that was somebody else’s life, not mine. I definitely found papers that I don’t want my family to read but not because they are scandalous. Because they are just embarrassing. Journaling was done sporadically and mostly captured ridiculous drama behind pseudo-relationships that I am grateful did not endure. Friends write of private jokes that no longer make any sense. Old boyfriends’ letters were cringe-worthy. Still, I can’t just toss them. Maybe I’ll keep some of these papers and draw black lines through anything incriminating, censoring them like wartime letters and government documents. Then at least it will look like I had something to hide.
Ironically, as I was writing this, I received a box of mementos from my father consisting mostly of unexpected gems from my transition to adulthood, from dependent child to successful woman to married mom. Letters from college asking for money. A lengthy treatise soliciting understanding of some unconventional after-college plans which I do not recall, nor did they ever come to fruition. (No surprise - I am pretty conventional.) There was the first business letter I wrote at my first (conventional) corporate job, and reviews from my employers and my staff. I don’t remember sharing these things, but they seemed to serve as an adult “report card” of sorts, and I was touched to see that he was proud enough to save them. But in reading them, I felt a little melancholy caught between laughing at my younger ideal self and longing for a past identity I barely even remember.
My two young children bring home dozens of papers every week. I try to sort through them as they come in and now I wonder if what I save reflects my children or my vision of them and what I want them to be. Would they choose to save the same things? Will they look back at these piles and remember who they were or will a giant piece be lost? Also, is it wrong to keep every item that says “I love you mom” to look at during those moments when it is hard to tell?
One thing I know, it’s time to get a bigger bin.
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