Seems that for most of life, I’ve either sat down, doing not much, or I’ve power stalked my way through walls.
The word walls could be representative of so many things: employers, men, waistline maintenance, house cleaning, errands, 2am mania-driven hair cuts.
When I’m walking, my stride is long and quick, thighs untouching and feet barely needing to graze ground. I’ve got a place to go and I’m on my way, and there’s no reason to smell flowers along the way since the goal end point has nothing to do with gardening.
Then there’s Isobel. Her recent renewed refusal to travel within the safe (more convenient) lap of the stroller means that should I tote her along, I must prepare myself for potential embolism as she stops to pick up sticks, poke at the mud with them, veer in the direction of the school yard and pet every dog along the way – even if it means chasing said canine with outstretched palm (because she’s learned that she must let the dog sniff her, but not that if he doesn’t want to sniff her, chasing won’t help).
Isobel – and this is one of the few ways we’re completely different and completely the same – is completely distractable and unable to keep on task. I only have so much focus and attention towards a task, because I am completely distractable and unable to keep on task. So I have learned to power through to see it to conclusion and she, to stop what she’s doing and forget about it, in search of a new pastime.
But I can’t power through while a two and a half year old lags behind. I can’t leave her be, to examine sticks and bugs and leaves, so that our money goes in the bank for our daycare cheque to go through so she can play with friends while I can sit at home or in a coffee shop, pretending to be a professional writer (this is not a commentary on any one of you that I consider a writer, it’s simply that I have a hard time conceding the thought of myself as a professional one, with my current monthly income of less than $700).
There’s laundry and dishes to be done, groceries to buy and cook, baths to take and the necessary slathering of baby lotion afterwards. And she wants to stop and look for rocks in planter boxes and sniff all of the 16 canisters of carnations at the corner store. I’m always panicking, barely accomplishing the bare minimum and she wants to touch leaves?
Obviously, there’s a lesson here. That I’m not living life to the fullest, embracing the wind or breathing in the fresh-cut grass. I get it. But how am I supposed to do that, when my blood pressure is rising? How do I relax enough into the moment, to not get swept away by it and ultimately become a failure as an adult?
I don’t think it makes me a bad mom, necessarily, but I’m aware of plenty of my peers who have no issue with walking for the sake of walking. I don’t have the chip in my brain – or if I do, it’s not yet been initialized.
So how on earth do I reboot?
