The Ink on the Calendar

Best Buddies

I grant myself two slow months in the year to catch my breath. During January and February, I was able to read two lengthy novels: Anna Karenina and Les Miserables. I was also able to write every day. In the coming months there will be days when I cannot even switch the computer on.

While friends suggest I purchase a laptop to write on the baseball field, I would rather not do that. I want to fully participate in the action of being present there. I see moms spending the whole game on the cell phone and wonder how their children must feel, that she is physically there but mentally absent?

Just when this slower schedule was starting to get boring, and I thought I might run out of things to write about, I wiped February off the dry-erase calendar and started putting up the schedule for March. My dry-erase marker quickly ran dry. I realized with dismay that my mini-break was over. Science fair projects for three kids (all due the same week), baseball games, softball games, practices, birthdays, and my son’s First Communion are all in my near future.

I both look forward to, and dread, the receipt of the game calendars for the spring season. This year the three children will be in different leagues, playing on different fields at the same time. When games fall on the same day, I sometimes feel like I am going to have a heart attack getting everyone where they have to be, hoping my husband can get to the second field on time before the game ends, leaving other parents to believe I’m the “absent parent” as I drop and run. And run and drop.

Just when I will have lots to write about, I won’t have the time! Now all of these are good things – I just wish they could be spread out a little more throughout the year.

And so, while the household chores pile up, I am allowing myself this half hour to write before the children get home from school. The dirt isn’t going anywhere, but ideas don’t sit in your head forever, and kids grow up even faster when you’re busy.

“In all wisdom and insight,
He has made known to us the mystery of his will
in accord with his favor that he set forth in him
As a plan for the fullness of times,
to sum up all things in Christ,
in heaven and on earth.”
Ephesians 1:8b-10