The dishwasher whirrs cyclically in the background, blade turning, turning, turning, doing a job I loathe. The oven beeps, up to temperature. I stop to pour a cup of coffee for D—would be nice if someone did that for me once in a while—then chastise myself for being snarky. Thing 1 calls from the bathroom, in the tub, “Mommy, Mommy, I need you.” “Just a second Thing 1,” I say, finishing with D’s coffee. Thing 1 needs a washcloth, so I flip a shark one into the bathtub with him. Breakfast is on the go, but my stomach is staging a mass revolt, so I grab a bag of dried fruit and nuts from the fridge to munch whilst the potatoes are cooking. Only then do I sit down to write.
One hundred and thirty words written, am just beginning to think of what I’d like to write next, then the timer for the potatoes starts beeping, just as the coffee pot beeps that it’s finished brewing. Against this cacophony, I deal with the potatoes, get Thing 1 out of the tub, consume a handful of fruits and nuts, and begin again only to pause … the potatoes, now in the frying pan, need to be stirred.
People ask me how I manage to do so much when I’m so busy … before I had a family, I had to concentrate, focus, and couldn’t write unless the circumstances were perfect. Now, kids, dogs, the craziness of daily life are things that cannot be ignored, which must be worked “around,” rather than through. Thing 2 stops to tell me he played “this many games of Mario Kart,” hands splayed wide to show he had 10 whole races to himself. I nod, smile, and say, “That’s great, little man.” Another pause to check the potatoes and add bacon to the other frying pan. Wet towels picked up off the bathroom floor, pjs and used wash cloths put in the laundry hamper, and sit down again for another few sentences.
I’ll supposedly have a bit of time to myself this afternoon to write, edit, and get a bit of work done, but I still use these odd, in-between moments as I’ve learned, the hard way, that unless I make time to write (and even a few seconds to scribble something down counts), I just don’t do it.
I pause, taking a brief moment amongst the dishwasher, kids, dogs, and Sunday morning talk shows to contemplate, breath a deep breath … it’s not quiet, but it’s calm, if only momentarily. I look forward to this afternoon, but take comfort in the busy-ness that surrounds me.
I took a brief look at my writing list's prompts for the day, but haven’t yet had a chance to discover where they might take me. A line from the prompter's discussion of the weather, however, has managed to get itself stuck to the bulletin board of my mind: “It amazes me that I used to house such contradictory sentiments.” Looking at my writing process, at what it was and what it now is, I can embrace this statement whole-heartedly. While there are, yes, times that I’d be willing to do many things to have a few moments of calmness amidst the chaos, those moments are few and far between. I love my chaotic life, and find that, strangely, I’m far more productive (writing-wise) than I ever was before. Go figure, eh?
