SAVOR - an update

I haven't forgotten about my word for the year - SAVOR - although I haven't posted about it in awhile. Once school started, I think I allowed the busy-ness to sweep me along from day to day and week to week and before I knew it, it was December!

I really don't want to wish my life away like that. To look back and wonder where the time went and if I did anything of consequence with the time that I had.

A friend was telling me recently that people in America often plan vacations and they know what they are going to do for every minute they are gone. When they get back, they are miserable. This thing that consumed them in the planning stage for months was over in a blink of an eye.

This I know from experience - it's like planning a wedding. A year of decisions and dreams over in 30 minutes. POOF!

But the thing that caught my attention as I listened to this friend was that even while we are ON the vacation, we wish ourselves into the next step of the trip rather than enjoy the moment we are in.

Ouch!

It's so true. I was so sure my Thanksgiving break would be spent reading and stitching and just "being." But once it was done, I couldn't really tell you what I did with my time. I did not have a stack of books to review for my blog, because I didn't read that much. I did finish a stitching project and I got some Christmas shopping done. But I was often distracted by what was coming, the coming week of school or something else.

I think my best moment of the 5 days I had off from school (5 days! They zoomed by!) was laying on the floor, playing cards with my son. We played only one game, but it was in a moment where I wasn't trying to get something else done or distracted about whatever was coming next. We just played. It was one of the highlights of the long weekend for me. I hope I can build more moments in like that one in the future.

Pause Button

Did you seen the "Easy Button" commercials that were popular a few years ago? I've decided I don't need an "easy" button - I need a pause button.

I want to press "pause" and stop the world moving around me while I get caught up - or even ahead - on the tasks that need to be done.

I want to press "pause" and stop the world while I tackle all of Dad's papers that are still sitting in boxes from last summer. I don't want to blow through them and end up throwing out something I'd want later. [And frankly, I'm not sure where I'd put anything I chose to keep.]

I want to press "pause" and stop the world while I clean my house.

I want to press "pause" and stop the world while I process new books for the library that are waiting (and waiting... and waiting).

I want to press "pause" and stop the world while I clean out old junk and make space for other... "stuff."

I want to press "pause" and stop the world while I catch up on the email that piles up by 40 or 50 messages a day.

I want to press "pause" and stop the world while I do some things that make me feel like myself again - reading books and being crafty.

I want to press "pause" and stop the world while I help my son get a handle on his school responsibilities so we can go back to enjoying some of our time together rather than wrestling over school work every night.

I want to press "pause" and stop the world so I can just stop and breathe.


See, I can do some of these things, but I can't do all of them. If I could hit pause, get something done, then hit play again, I could get twice as much done. I could sleep until I wasn't tired any more. I could do my household responsibilities and my parenting responsibilities and my work responsibilities without feeling like I'm only skating by on all of them rather than doing anything with excellence.


In the absence of a pause button, a Time Turner would do, but I know they were all destroyed in the Battle at the Department of Mysteries, so I guess I'm out of luck there, too....

Two Lost Weeks

Sometimes my husband and I toy with the idea of going away on a trip, just the two of us. Travel with just three people is fairly easy, especially at my son's age, so these ideas have never materialized into anything concrete. And I don't feel like something is lacking in my life or my marriage because of it. I'm happy to have the three of us together, to "do" life together.

The other day, I was thinking about the time I spent with my dad before he passed away. I was thinking back to the logistics we put together - the friends and family who helped - so I could go be with him for the last couple weeks of his life, and my husband and son could do work and school respectively until the school year ended and we could see where things were going to go from there.

I was dismayed to realize that I have a two week gap in my memory of my son's life.

I have no idea what his life looked like while I was gone. Sure, I talked to him on the phone and Skype while I was away, but I don't have a mental image of what it looked like to have a cousin come over and get him ready for school in the morning (what did he have for breakfast? how did things go when she dropped him off for school?). I can't remember what he did after school (did he go to after school care? did my husband leave work early?). I'm pretty sure I missed a field trip in there, and I know I missed a major school presentation (my in-laws came over so he had someone there).

I don't like having that two week gap. I know as he gets older, those gaps are going to naturally become more plentiful as he becomes more independent. But for now, I want to soak up as much time with him and memories as I can to compensate for those two lost weeks of his life and to prepare me for the gaps yet to come.