Between this year's fall family portrait season and volunteering to co-chair the literacy committee at my boys' school (which basically meant giving up most of my free time in November to plan and execute a four day book fair event), I've been struggling to find the quiet for many, many weeks. And when I struggle to find slow space, quiet mind space, I reflect. Is this busyness filling me and draining me in positive ways? Or do I feel depleted and sucky?
Photography fills me. Spending time with families and trying to capture a raw piece of their real life relationship feels right. The drain feels synched with my soul. The drain is work, and with this work I finish and am ready for more. But the Literacy co-chair role left me depleted and asking myself quite a few questions about what is really important, in more ways than just my role in volunteering at school.
Because hindsight and reflection are such useful soul tools, I can now see with the clearest vision that I overused myself at the kids' school in the depleted, sucky way. I am not co-chair material. There's nothing fancy about seeing your name (continually misspelled, I might add) on notes going home for every child's parent to read. At least for me. Now, with the experience behind me, I can say to myself honestly that my time is best spent closer to my children at school. Writer's Workshop in the classrooms: I'm there! A call to come in and talk to the classes about old-fashioned cameras because they're currently learning about history and the tools used to document it, I am so there. A little extra help in the library? Call me!
A little under the radar. A little more to the left. That's where I like myself. I'm learning.
Yesterday the soul quiet arrived at our house. In fact, it drenched us. We had nothing, absolutely nothing, to do. And so we did everything of the nothing busy variety. The boys were handed down a Wii and Mario Kart, complete with steering wheels. They thought it was hysterical to set me up with a driver named Baby Peach who drove a baby carriage with a booster seat. And how funny it was to make me race her on an ice course. As she slammed into ice caves and slipped off icy roads into frozen waters while softly wailing, they held their sides laughing. But they didn't realize that I am a quick learner. Once I figured out how to use the controller, Baby Peach became an older version named Peach Boss. And her baby carriage transformed into a glossy pink hotrod. I Mario Kart-Ninja'ed them on ice, in a gold mine, on a dirt track. And they still held their sides laughing, so in the end we all win.
Theo and I sat side by side as he worked on the book he's writing. In between marveling at his imagination and balanced use of witty and serious language, I buried myself in the current book I am reading (and can't put down). We noshed on summer sausage and cheese while Eric and the boys set up Eric's collection of LGB trains from his childhood. As the sun went down, we went out for Thai food. Then we drove around looking at Christmas lights. More fully belly laughs spilled out and overflowed, and the boys decided for themselves the houses that were complete overkill. A little under the radar. A little more to the left, I whispered to myself. We came home and found old Christmas shows on TV. The boys dropped their clothes on the living room floor and hopped onto the couch, pulling blankets to cover cold but full bellies. This morning we woke up to a real life snow globe outside and another day of blissful nothing ahead of us.
This time of year, when busyness is front and center, and overkill is so easy to achieve - figuratively and literally, I find that more than I go searching for a quietude lifeline, one finds me. And right now, I can hear that quiet in the way of a small, loud voice, calling up, "Mom, Peach Boss is ready."
