True Life: Time Is Finite & Having Kids Really Drove That Home For Me
"How many months are there in a year? Is it 849,217?" - Griffin, age 7
6:45 am - 8:40 am Prepare self and kids for school and work. Get us to our various places which is frankly a daily miracle.
8:45 Squeeze in a quick and brilliant coffee date that means I can figure out a way to help the PTA without attending meetings. A theoretical investment in future time saving.
9:17 Consider how to extract myself from this meeting so I can make it to 9:30 yoga class I signed up for and will thus have to pay $10 to miss.
9:27 Give up. We are deep in conversation about our school’s ever-increasing needs and if the PTA is even capable of meeting them. Let go of yoga class (and $10) with the soothing thought that at least I’ll have an extra hour to work.
9:45 The other mother leaves. A very strong need to pee helps me decide to go home.
9:47 Receive text from daughters school that she “can’t stop itching her head.” She’s missed an ungodly amount of school in the last four weeks thanks to a mysterious (scary-strong) asthma episode. I’ve made countless (why count) trips to the doctor and finally requested (wtf did I have to request!) a nebulizer that has made a huge difference and NOW SHE IS ITCHY.
9:53 Vent to spouse, who reminds me that he forgot to give her allergy medicine yesterday. I text the teacher words that sound fake and excuse-y even to me, even though they’re true. Why does calling something allergies sound like a lie? “Its probably allergies” feels like saying “I know that a good mom would come and get her immediately but please don’t make me.”
10:15 Go to the school with my sticky bottle of Children’s Zytec, where a nice teacher tells me her son has reactive skin, too. I read my daughter a book about a unicorn in the cozy corner, which has a weighted blanket I want to nap under. I could stay right here with her all day. I have to go now, I say when the book is done. She’s different here, and it’s a rare treat to see. I hug her tight, she puts a heart sticker on my cheek and I leave.
10:27 Home. You have something on your face, my husband says. Sit down to try to ignore the two hours that have passed since I dropped the kids (and the fact that only three hours remain until pick up) and work.
10:45 Someone rings the door bell to sell me something. I am slightly rude but strain to be polite as I send him away. Ok, work Miranda. Work.
11:18 The cat starts clawing everything. I direct an entire days worth of ‘go away’-ness at her as I shut her in the very comfortable basement. I’m really sorry, I tell the cat out loud. It’s just that my face still hurts like I have a sinus infection, even though I finished the antibiotics a week ago. I feel like she kind of gets it.
11:20 Wonder if the time cost of leaving the house to finish the work day (which only lasts until 1:45 on Tuesdays for me) would pay off in the end. Wish someone else could tell me this. Frozen again with indecision.
11:36 Write this instead of doing work because I’ve been interrupted so many times I need to air myself out.
Stuff I’ve loved lately
This short documentary (is that the right thing to call it?) from filmmaker and mother Shaina Feinburg called I Almost Quit My Career For My Kids. Then I Met Joan Darling. It’s short, pleasantly resolution-less and lovely.
As a basically-only child, Susan Dominus’s piece, The Surprising Way Siblings Shape Us, was really interesting to me. As I try to raise siblings, I feel in the dark about the relationship they’re engaged in. I’m so hungry to understand what’s going on between my kids, and I guess maybe I’ll never really be part of what they’ve got together. A lot of what’s between them is just theirs, I think?
I’m slowly reading The Order Of Time by Carlo Rovelli. I think about time a lot as a parent, the way it passes, drains, fills, rushes, the way I feel like I inhabit every moment of my kids lives all at once sometimes. Only looking really closely at time itself, in a weird mind-bendy physics way (to use super technical terms) seems to contextualize this experience.
My friend wrote about the Oregon Symphony’s Lullaby Project here, and I’ve been thinking about lullabies. We sang Moon River to Griffin last night (a song we used to sing him every night) when he had a nightmare. When we finished singing last night, we asked if he remembered it and he said no. I played him “Coorie Doon” (below) yesterday when he needed a rest after cleaning his room, another baby years favorite. I don’t think he remembered it either. Maybe only in his subtlest body. Maybe. Anyway I love lullabies.
The Strange, Lonely Childhood Of Neko Case. I had a nice Mothers Day, and one of my favorite parts of it was having the house to myself for a bit to really blast some Neko Case. I love her love her love her very dearly. She’s going on tour this fall and somehow I nabbed presale tickets. See some of you at the Roseland in November I assume?
In the springtime, I am reminded how full of little invitations the neighborhoods of Portland are. There’s even a map of “PDX Sidewalk Joy” We were on a walk the other day, and the kids spent a lovely 20 minutes just poking around in this little bark chip pile surrounding a freshly cut tree stump that someone had tossed a few grubby toys in. We have a tree swing I’ve talked about on
but we need more. What should we do next?
Maybe a little aimlessness is OK. The hours seem to pass plenty full without my filling them. May you find time for aimlessness. Maybe scrolling here felt kind of aimless. Happy to share this aimless space with you.
I have an itchy/allergic kid, too. I feel like a jerk when I explain right from drop off that her eyes are red because of ALLERGIES (Not be named-pink eye).
When I worked part-time and parented the rest of the time I always felt like my legs were never long enough to be in both places at once. Wasn't there a myth about a giant who could straddle two worlds? But your story has a happy ending because the itching could be cured with medicine and was not the result of "head effing lice."