I don’t want to kick them out the door, rush and hurry them on, but they are late and everyone is in their own world. A cold winter morning, my daughter is in despair over the unfairness that “everyone is out but us.” What she would do with a “cold day” (there is no ice or snow new to what’s been there now for weeks), she doesn’t have an idea. She just envies others having nothing while she must continue on with a day of something. Making it the ten feet from garage to heated car, the worst of her day is over, but she doesn’t see it so.
My oldest son walks around the house talking aloud his thoughts and—talking rather than doing—achieves nothing until we yell and compel him to stop contemplating walking out the garage and front door but rather just “get out to the car!”
My youngest son has lost a new hat. It’s snow camo with ear flaps, and it is true, there are hardly more perfect days for such than winter mornings of negative four. I assure him we will find it. We both laid eyes on it last night. Neither of us remember where.
Their anxieties, their frustrations, their attitudes; they spill into mine; especially in the last end stir where everyone is yelling at another to “hurry” when absolutely no one has made an effort of such all morning.
I don’t get it, but I do—which doesn’t make sense, but does.
Truth is, these frustrations that I find in them, are reflections of the same I know in me.
I envy and am sometimes jealous of what I perceive as ease and rest others enjoy. Truth, I don’t know their life. I don’t know the worries, troubles, and frustrations others live. I only see from an outside and distant view—just as others do of me. What seems like ease is often only idle and, in idle, wishing for a purpose and something of value to do. Who, after too much time with friends, or too much time away from school, doesn’t long for time alone or to be in a class again? We want other than what we have too much of in present; and when we changes, we miss what we had, only then seeing the value that it held.
I think too much—not out loud, put on paper and in print (just as I write my thinking now). Too much writing, I live too little doing, and for all the thoughts and dreams, I stand before—still thinking—upon unopened or traveled doors. CHOOSE ONE! DO SOMETHING! MAKE A DECISION AND GO!
I loathe myself. I run to make atone in action—on treadmill, running miles, and moving nowhere: fitting for an overthinker.
In the living of my day, I lose nearly all I carry with me. I lay it down in use of something else, different task and duty that appears. Task complete, I forget what I held and what before I was doing, moving on in focus to the next. Then time comes, I need beginning carried object again, and I start in circles, retracing steps, not knowing it is right where I left it, but having no idea where that might be.
I love my kids. Sometimes they drive me crazy. This is the way of people and love—with others and with ourselves.
I take a deep breath, let it go, restoring back to a balance and peace.
I write it out. By the time thought writes, I’m late—same as the rest of my family. I’m late almost every day. Until I write a thought, finish to complete, or stopping point on where I can resume, my day and mind won’t balance. Without that, I am a mess of all three of my children’s moods: envious and resenting that I must stop from write and get on with making a living; spun up in circles of myself, getting nowhere and doing nothing; and lost, searching for where it is the story ended, knowing it is right where I had left it, but no idea where that might be.
I love my kids, but we are all a little crazy (unique, eccentric: maybe these are better words). What I see of theirs, I know in mine. These are wisdoms children teach us.
I love us still.