Like Sand Through the Hour Glass

The First Day of Kindergarten

"This will fly by", said my friend when Mary and Kate started kindergarten. "Hold on to your seat", they said, as the first day became the first month and then, before I knew it, kindergarten was over.

We just wrapped the final day of fourth grade. The school year, with it's rigid schedule, bounds us so tightly in our collective race to the finish line that, in our effort to get through to the next vacation day, we do miss the day to day joy of dragging our children out of bed at 6:00 A.M.

We start out with the best intentions. September lunches are packed the night before and include sushi, fried rice and black bean wraps. By May my children are eating snack pack applesauce, still frozen edamame and at least twice per week, the cheese lunch box from Starbucks. The clothes that fit, and matched, at the beginning of the year stretch to cover growing bodies in June. At the end of this annual race I'm happy to get them out the door in clothes that are clean: horizontal stripes on top, vertical stripes on the bottom but at least they are Downy fresh.

"How many days until summer?", not because we don't like school but because we are exhausted and deeply moved by the idea of sleeping until something exotic like say, 7:00 A.M.

Kindergarten just became the summer before fifth grade and the mountain of discarded days, those piled up in the race to finish math homework I scarcely understand before eating a hastily created dinner, showering and getting to bed at a time that will at least allow enough sleep so as to facilitate the impending early morning wake up, those days have been carelessly tossed aside in an effort to get through to the next. And the problem with this kind of daily sprint is that you do tend to miss out on the whole of days moving forward, taking us from one grade to the next. You see I don't actually know when the math homework moved from identifying the shape, which I did understand without question, to computing the area of complex three dimensional figures, which I absolutely do not. I wish I did.

The Last Day of Fourth Grade

My concern, because it is not that I like my soon to be fifth grade children any less than I liked my soon to be kindergarten children, is that these days continue to grow behind us as we race to a time when the girls move from my daily life to their daily life. And these days so casually cast aside in an effort to get, clean and well fed, to the next make up the time warp that is hurling us at lightning speed to a time without childhood. Which I believe is some sort of math problem but I can't be certain.

It's time to dig in and enjoy the slow day to day of summer, where being well fed means eating a few ripe strawberries after your second ear of corn on the cob and where math problems are created while lying in the grass looking at starts in the sky. These we remember, and savor, even as they move us from one day to the next.

Catch the Door Before it Closes

I've been keeping pretty close tabs on things. All of those people who said that time flies have nothing on me, I'm watching it happen. And I am doing my very best to suck every bit of life out of every minute of every day because I know, and it bangs away in my head every time my mind wanders, that this is THE summer after third grade. When they look back at pictures they will say things like "oh Mary, that was the summer after third grade, when you fell out of the tree by the coffee shop" or "Kate! Look at this picture of your knees! Mom, was that the day she learned to finally ride her bike?". Yes, I am painfully aware that the door on this summer is about to close, a big loud slam that is set to happen in three days. I'm on top of it. I think.

There are things that I like better about children who are eight and not three. We do not have to assess their level of exhaustion before deciding to eat in a restaurant. Unless it's way, way past bedtime, they can swing it. We can stay up to watch fireworks, catch fireflies, and eat s'mores. They sleep in, current wake up time is between 9:30 and 10:00 (which is going to be a bear of a reversal once this summer door closes). They can pour themselves a glass of lemonade, after, of course, asking if they may. We can take a two hour car trip without an arsenal of activities; for two glorious hours they are actually somewhat happy talking to me (recent topics of conversation include: what exactly is in strawberry jam? and why is it called jam? what does it mean to sue someone and why does everyone sue McDonalds? is it because they have bad food? why don't boys have boobies? how long until the new prince will be king? and why isn't the queen's husband a king?). Distinct advantages to being eight, and I appreciate every one of them. However, eight is just a stop on the road to summers spent working and sweating and cursing the humidity for creating a droopy mess out of a once crisp linen blouse, and that I'm not ready to accept.

As much as she hates it, Mary's somewhat diminutive size means that I can still scoop her up and carry her when one of her summer battle wounds is proving too much for the last block on a long walk home. She fits quite nicely on my back, at least for one block, and I love that she still finds that space a safe spot to shrug off the responsibilities that come with her eight years. Her sister, now much too tall for me to carry, is perfectly content climbing into our bed and reading with me for hours. She brings her bear and senator and rainy Sunday mornings are the best part of my week. Because even though they are eight and much too rapidly picking up the this and that's which will lead us to the teen years, they still fit snuggly in my world, and they still like it here.

We have three days before we return to a schedule that requires an alarm clock and a strict adherence to bed times. A Monday to Friday gig that means less spontaneity, more responsibility and quite often a scramble for clean clothes. We're going to make the most of these three days, I'm watching, I see the time flying by but we are loving every bit of it. It's been a glorious summer, don't let the door hit you as it closes.

Beach Necessities

We needed a vacation. Jack was having one, hours away on his annual four day weekend golf bender, and the girls and I were left at home with all the responsibilities of summer. We were ready for a day at the beach but this time we chose a one hour drive over a 15 minute walk. There was no planning, and very little actual thought beyond wanting to see the view from the other side of the water.

Bag packed, dog walked, children in the car, and one hour later we were as far away from the city as you need to be if you only need one day of vacation. We remembered bathing suits, towels and sunblock; we forgot pails and shovels and the big blue umbrella.

"Girls! We forgot your sand buckets!"
"That's all right Mom, we have these cups from Starbucks, they'll work".

Really?

They did. We had a nice sandy picnic, we played in the water, and for several glorious hours, we built a sand village with nothing more than the plastic cups we had accumulated throughout the day. For the first time in months, the girls collaborated, rather than argued, and worked well together to create a neighborhood of small sand huts, with no worries as to whose turn it was or whose bucket was last used for water, the usual banter of the beach architecture.

As one who has gone to great lengths to limit the amount of toys we own, who firmly believes that the best tool for play is a vivid imagination (and a sister), the Starbucks cup sand suburb was reassuring. My children might understand. While they will always want, they don't always need; adorned with shells and rocks and feathers, it was simply beautiful. A fine reminder to their mother who usually brings scoops and shovels and castle shaped buckets to the beach, all we really need is six hands, a few plastic cups and
time.

For one day, we had all the time we could need.

Making Copies, Keeping Friends

Five copies, all stashed in a box at the back of my closet, waiting to be mailed. They've moved at least six times; that I have found them, yet again, is a true wonder. I made the copies around 15 years, ago, in the supply room at UMB Bank on the Plaza, in Kansas City. Over lunch at my desk, likely steamed vegetable dumplings from Bo Lings, I read an article in Town and Country about five friends who took a hotel barge river cruise through France. Floating down the Burgundy Canal on the Fluer De Lys seemed idyllic, and completely possible; I was unmarried, without children, and working hard to be able to do things like float around in France. And so I made the copies, to send to my friends, thinking that maybe someday, possibly soon, we could take such a wonderful trip.

The articles never made it to the mail, the trip never happened. Our lives grew, jobs became careers; we became wives and mothers, architects and milliners, but not sailors. We live in three different states, the last time I was in the same room with all these women was when I got married. The idea of four days together, without agenda or distraction, is mesmerizing.

Certainly the Canal du Midi is lovely but I'd be content with a few days at the beach, or in a hotel room in Akron, Ohio. This might be the best birthday present in the world; check your mailbox ladies, it's not too late.

Swimming, But Not in Books

Faced with almost six hours each day to myself, having spent the last five years with less than six minutes a day to myself, I am understandably lost. In an effort to shape my days, and my thighs, and keep me from wandering the neighborhood as the scary lady with the empty stroller, I've made two commitments to myself: to find the me that is buried beneath the five years of days spent with children, and to write a book. And so, three days a week I drop off the kindergartners and join my husband on the train to the loop, posing as an actual commuter who has an actual place to be. In reality, of course, I do not. I could stop and do some shopping, or wander the Art Museum, but I don't, I head to the gym and swim away my morning, flopping about in the pool with more direction, and less skill, than ever before. And after an hour or so of that, I make my way to the library where I sit and focus on task number two, a bit more challenging, especially today when it seems that all of Chicago is on fire and every fire engine in the city is racing by my window, but it's a great view.

The pool is one of the best places to be, back and forth I go in the initially painfully cold water, all alone. At my time the real swimmers are off to their offices, leaving me alone with the pool guy who wanders around picking up towels and playing on his computer. This is the perfect schedule, this solitude allows me ample to time to think and organize my thoughts, which is what I must do before I sit down to write anything. But problematic, I'm old now, drat, and what I compose so elegantly in my head is lost immediately if I don't get to a pen, fast. Difficult when immersed in 8 feet of water, perhaps I could shout out my musings to the meandering pool man, he looks like he needs something to do, other than watch me flail away in the deep end.

There are two real challenges to writing a book, aside from my memory issues, as I see it. First, used book stores. Let's start here, I love my local used book store, I can spend hours, really, wasting time, peering at the unorganized madness. But who wrote all these books? There are this many books in the world that have been relegated to used book stores? My book will never make it to the first run shops, I know it. Boxes upon boxes will be deposited on the steps of the used book store, never having seen a Barnes and Noble. My book tour will involve me stopping at Dunkin' Donuts on the way to Powell's, I'll bribe a few people I pass on the way with free coffee and bad donuts, if only they will come and listen to me read from my fresh on the used book shelf book. Who could possibly read all these books?

Which brings me to the second problem, apparently no one. In my two days of pseudo commuting I have discovered that in the five years I have been away, people have stopped reading books. In fact most have stopped reading all together, save the few hardy souls who soak up their morning news in the form of The Red Eye, the Tribune's effort at soft core news, with all the local celebrity sightings; today's juicy tidbit, the Bachelorette and her fiance were seen "canoodlin'" in the Windy City. But no books, rather people played with their phones. My phone does not play with me, it allows me to make and receive calls but we do not play together. There's no hard feelings, I think we like each other, but for several reasons, it is just not a good playmate. It also does not give me directions or allow me to check football scores, so perhaps if I upgraded to a better and newer friend, we'd have more to play with. Others who have better friends then are probably far more skilled in finding celebrities and hot spots, but not bookstores, they don't need to be, they aren't any. We don't read books anymore.

Back to the pool.

Three is Hard

One day last week the ladies and I ventured out to the suburbs for a day with my friend Fran and her charming, just turned three, daughter Meg. Fran works, in an actual office four days a week, has her home on the market and is about to burst with baby number two, due in a matter of weeks. She's tired, and at odds with her three year old who spends her days asserting her new found three year old independence.

When Mary and Kate were deep into three my wise friend Lisa, the mother of two, 6 and 13, held my hand and said "three is hard". The terrible two's? Pish! It's three that wears you out. And from three years past she could easily look back, reminded of the battles, the exhaustion, and the ultimate passage to four. In the foggy middle of three I could only yawn and collapse into my bed each evening, ready for another round the next day.

And so, with the perspective of mid four, I could tell Fran "three is hard". And sharing that little known secret with someone else allowed me to look across the table at four and half and realize, for the first time, that three is a distant memory. With little fanfare we segued quite smoothly into the contented daily life that 52 months of living brings. And while the bell still rings occasionally, signaling the start of a battle, our newfound maturity allows us all to sit back and say, really? Life is too short, and time flies, especially when you are three, going on four.

Time Passages

Children have made me older. And they keep me young, living with their daily joie de vivre is contagious, while their daily independence gives me gray hair. They wear me out, at the end of each day I'm tired on a level I could never before understand, and yet energized every morning when I hear four little feet running down the hall. I'm up and ready to do it all again, each day being a fresh start from what we left behind at bedtime the previous night. My dear sister was convinced I was too old to take this on, at 37 she was certain that I would crumble into a pile of old woman'ness when they reached the constantly mobile second year. But I did not, and here we are at four, just as tired, just as wonderful, and just as ready to head into the next year.

But if they are now four then I must have aged, just a bit. For years I was in my twenties, not a specific age, just floating about happily in the second decade. And then the thirties happened and again, I was somewhere in my 30s for years, wonderfully happy and content, and aging very little. We were married when I was 34 so I stuck with that age for quite some time, not meaning to really, but it suited me and I liked being 34. Will and Eliza, two of my favorite children of two of my very best friends, were part of our wedding. They were six, the perfect age to be adorable, Eliza called Jack the "broom" and Will thought he was marrying me, reluctant to hand over the ring at the ceremony. Will, Eliza and I are all about the same height now.

My friend Brad recently asked me how old the girls were at my 40th birthday party. If they were not yet two, and now they are four, how old am I? Before children there were no real markers, nothing but a few smile lines to remind me that I was older than the day before. Mary and Kate change every day, every single day there is something new, and thus I grow with them, even if I remain blissfully unaware. Mary and Kate make me older if only because they are a true reflection of time passing. And thankfully they remind me how precious time is, every single day.