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 nine times out of ten, 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.
