We were walking through a big box store when my seven-year old spotted a large display for “5-hour energy” supplement.
“I need that!” he said, tugging on my shirt to make sure that I heard his plea.
“There is no world in which a boy your age needs more energy.” A man behind us laughed, himself with a young boy in tow.
“No joke,” he said as his boy eyed the cardboard marketing assessing its brilliance.
“No really, Mommy,” my boy whispered, embarrassed that he had been overheard and with the knowledge that the grown-ups were laughing at his earnestness. “Can you imagine all I could get done if I didn’t have to sleep?!”
When do we lose that? Somewhere between seven and forty, no doubt, somewhere between getting your first real kiss, and getting your first real job.
I wonder what would happen if we cleared away everything (within reason, we do have to pay the mortgage after all) and left ourselves with only the things that were worth five extra hours of energy, what kind of world we could create for ourselves? To see a boy so earnest in explaining that there just aren’t enough hours in the day to play superheroes, play with friends, play with cars, ride bikes, draw pictures, watch television, play videogames, I can’t help but wonder when the fun got sucked out for most of us?
Today the boys were in the pool. Yes it is a glorious pool in all of its blow-up glory. You wouldn’t know it to watch them. After many a synchronized dance routine (courtesy of the Olympics) in which my boys did “the worm” underwater, I had to think, too many of us take ourselves way too seriously. So instead of trying to get so much done in so little time, I sat outside in the shade reading a Maeve Binchy novel (my first) while intermittently stopping to clap for the dance routines.
It was slow and the chores still got done despite not being crazy about it. I didn’t try to write (my kids are way too demanding for that), but I got in a few pages of a book and got to sit and think. It’s time to create the life we want out of the life we have. Maybe it just takes small adjustments here and there, saying yes to much, but sometimes saying no.
Books will still get written, but how I enjoyed just sitting and reading a book.
Go forth this week and if you have the chance at a pool, at a lake, (don’t try it in your bathtub unless your smaller than the average three-year old in my house) I suggest you do the worm. Under water. And then ponder why you haven’t been living like that all along.
Love.
My first reaction before I reached that marvelous freckled face was, “Sleep deprivation doesn’t make you as productive as you might think.”
But acting like children is, despite its bad press, often a good idea. This afternoon, we read books (separately and together) and colored and watched “book cartoons” from our Scholastic DVD set. I managed a few notes and things to check in the MS, but mostly we all vegged in the AC. It wasn’t the worm, but it was nice.
Sleep deprivation is highly overrated, agreed (not that it stops knuckleheads like us but that is a totally different post).
I thought of you twice this weekend. Once when I went to pay a library fine (the guilt! I know! To make it worse, I happened to hit the week when they were waving fines. Will justice never be served??), and then when we collected the boys lunch bags for their summer reading event, and went to the carnival. They did a really nice job, which of course, always makes me think of my favorite librarian. And Culver’s was giving out free ice cream! Yes, life is good. A bouncy slide, a bounce house, a clown on stilts making balloon animals, a bunch of librarians putting tattoos on kids (amused when I said, “But I thought there’d be needles?”) and a cupcake van from Chicago. Thank you Library gods!
I’m so proud of you for going to pay a fine—most people wait ’til we come after them.
Any Summer Reading Program that has the librarians tattooing kids is an excellent SRP. And free Culver’s, too ? Man . . .
Ah, sounds so nice Lyra. And timely. I am in hyper overdrive. I am querying everyone except the man who sells hot dogs on the corner. I wrote a pitch for a new book, most of a rough outline, and started research. Of course I can’t stuff the information in fast enough so am reading three books at the same time: one on paganism, one on mythology, and a thesis based on the scientific findings of shamanism in Lappland. Too bad I can’t hang a toad upside down in my chimney as a protection charm against the inlaws, or bury a witch bottle of nails and urine by the front door. Did I mention I stayed up until 2:40am writing a completely unrelated essay?
Deb! Gah!
Yay you, and don’t rule out the hot dog man. You never know. What a relief to bbe at the querying stage for this one, after all the daunting research. So tell me, is the next one going to be historical as well with all of the insane research or no?
(And holy cow that you already have a rough outline for the next one…)
Given we are an unemployed family now, I’m writing genre fiction next. It will have both contemporary and historical aspects. A rush to find a mythical object rumored to connect earth and heaven. I think it’s going to be kind of fun. At least I hope!
More freewheeling fun, less taking myself too seriously. Check.
This is a reminder I’ve needed pretty much every day since I was about 8. Do “the worm” in the pool, you say? Next time I go swimming I will remember that. Two weeks ago I jumped off a boat into the Mediterranean and suddenly remembered how salt water buoys you up. You can swim for an hour without a rest because you don’t have to work nearly as hard. How is it I ever forget that???
I love that you jumped off a boat into the Mediterranean. And sometimes you can swim for an hour because the salt water buoys you, and sometimes it’s because you remembered how fun playing in the water could be before we started calling it exercise and debating with ourselves how many calories we were burning.
Yay you!
And this photo … A very cute eye!
Ha! I was testing out the settings on my new camera. He was trying to see inside. Such a ham. He must get that from his father…
Oh my god, the underwater worm. How could I love this post even more? Not possible.
I’ve been sick for days and this post makes me long even harder for all the things I wish I could do. Right now I’d settle for the ability to take one simple walk down to the lake. Instead, I’m stuck reading and watching tv in bed. I’m at the point where I wish I could trade in these many wasted hours and turn them in for a few healthy, sleep-free days. Your son is on to something.
Is it wrong that I read “reading and watching tv in bed” and said, “ahhhhh”?
You will be well soon and when you are I expect a full report on your lake version of the worm. Please ask the mister to take photos…just think what an icebreaker they’ll be at your next reading!
i’ve been wondering about all i could get done if my head wasn’t clogged with conversations centered around all the people who–in my head–have done me wrong. how am i supposed to be a productive, joyful person if every minute i’m left alone with my thoughts, i’m constructing some grand court room where every act against me is tried?
i swear to god…as i just typed that, a tiny gnat flew into my throat and caused me to gag.
alright, dear universe, i get it.
that picture deserves to be the size of a card table top and on a wall somewhere everyone can see it. what a perfect moment captured forever.
Josephine. Reread your first paragraph. Get those conversations down on paper! (or at least a computer screen) Something interesting happens when you see them somewhere besides your own head.
Like a chemical reaction. It can be good to watch it blow up outside somewhere, outside where it can’t hurt you as much.
(sorry, I hit “post” too soon before….)
Yes, Josey, you need to get them outside of yourself. I have this liittle voodoo doll (crazy, but stay with me). When the thoughts paralyze me from being able to move forward, I “give” the thoughts to her. Then I listen to them as her thoughts, not mine. Most times it makes me see that they’re only a roadblock that I put there because I’m scared of something (not doing enough, not being enough, etc. Enough seems to be key for me.)
Silly, but when you think off them as someone else’s thoughts, you can separate the truth from the insecurities.
Think. What would you tell your kids if they came to you with the same anxiety? Then tell yourself the same thing. Sometimes it just takes a bit of kindness directed inward rather than out.
Love.
Three cheers for Maeve! I think she would love to know you were applauding the worm while nose-deep in one of her novels.
Small adjustments are the key to big changes, I’m certain of it.
XO
Averil, I kid you not. If there was ever a book I needed to read at exactly the right time, it’s her book right now.