I feel a day like this coming on...
I like to have a plan. I think I come by this naturally. My parents emphasized the importance of knowing what you needed to do when (and neither of them are exactly wild and crazy examples of spontaneity themselves). When I was a teenager, well before the days of GPS or even Mapquest, they used to have me drive to important places, such as the site of a job interview, the day before the event I was supposed to attend, to ensure I knew exactly where to go and how long it would take me. Then, of course, my parents would point out that I should add fifteen minutes to my estimated travel time (at least) to give myself a cushion in case of bad traffic or other unexpected delays. It took me a long time (and many, many strange looks from my husband as I told him about similar family procedures that always seemed perfectly natural to me) before I realized that most people don't operate like this.
I won't say that I didn't have a long flirtation with procrastination in my adolescence and to a certain extent in my college years. I would do my reading and note-taking fairly early but delay the actual writing of a paper, say, until the day or even the night before it was due. In retrospect, I was damn lucky that I was never the victim of a poorly-timed flu or power outage--it would have been nobody's fault but my own if I had missed one of those closely-cut deadlines simply because I misjudged how kind the universe was going to be to me when I needed everything to go perfectly.
Nowadays, I'm back to my hypervigilant planning roots. Our family life has too many moving parts to just have faith that somehow everything will all work out and get done on time. Just the logistics of getting the kids to their soccer practices each week (appropriately dressed, with shin guards, soccer ball, water bottle, and on time despite having to herd along all three of the boys every blessed time) is a challenge--and that's only one part of what we have to make sure happens every week. Needless to say, I have Plan A and B, and often C and D, to try to make sure that the critical things get done each week no matter how crammed our schedule gets.
But the truth is, there is no amount of planning that is enough to keep everything going exactly the way you expect. I'll admit that, but it doesn't make me happy.
Today we came back from a long holiday weekend away with my husband's family. On the surprisingly quick drive back to L.A. from Palm Springs, I began making a mental to-do list of all the things I needed to do on Tuesday, and scheduling each hour of the day until I would need to pick up the kids from school. Drop off an invoice for copies in the booster club box, stop by and see if the school coordinator needs any volunteer help with clerical tasks, go home and work on materials for the booster club fundraiser later this month: not a moment of my kid-free time would be wasted. Then we got home, and Son #3 crawled into his bed and fell asleep for most of the afternoon. Uh-oh. He gave up napping before he turned three, and when he sleeps during the day it means nothing good. Sure enough, by the time he woke up he had an obvious fever.
I wish I could say that it was with good grace that I immediately scrapped Plan A, consigned the bulk of the tasks on it to the category of Things That Could Wait Another Day, and morphed into a cross between Mary Poppins and Florence Nightingale. In truth, I wasn't sure where the thermometer was, and it was only reluctantly that I admitted to myself that even if Son #3's fever disappeared before morning, he couldn't go to school anyway since he would not be fever-free for 24 hours. (Yes, I realize that most school illness policies seem to be more often honored in the breach than the observance, with parents surreptitiously dosing their kids with Motrin or whatever and hoping the teachers won't notice. When I'm feeling charitable, I hope that the people doing this are those who need to work and have no child care options, but I still hate it. At any rate, I do have a child care option when my kids are not in school--me--and I don't like being a hypocrite, so I follow the rules.) I fretted a bit (silently) about the undone Tuesday items that were going to be added to an already pretty full Wednesday lineup, on top of the all-too-real possibility that Son #3's fever would not have run its course in time for him to go to school Wednesday either.
But there wasn't much point in throwing a pity party for myself over it. If being able to plan is critical for being able to keep our family life on a relatively even keel, being flexible is even more important for keeping things going when the plan goes awry. Okay, sometimes my backup plans aren't ideal: one day last year I congratulated myself on my foresight in putting the boys in nearby schools when my car got a flat tire and I had to walk most of the routes I would normally have driven that day. (Walk Son #3 to preschool and stay for my work day. Walk Son #3 back home. Walk to elementary school with Son #3 to pick up Son #2. Walk to middle school with Sons #2 & 3 to pick up Son #1. Walk home. Fall into stupor on couch because you haven't walked that much in a single day in, well, ever.) I wasn't feeling nearly so smug by 4 p.m., though on the plus side I slept very well that night. The boys were pretty game that day, though, and receptive to the idea that they were getting exercise and helping the environment (which is how I shamelessly sold them on the unplanned walk). There was certainly less whining than I would have expected, especially when one subtracted mine. If I could survive that day, I'll survive tomorrow. And probably many other days that don't go the way I hoped or expected.
I hope my kids will learn to both plan and be flexible. I think that no matter what they decide they want to do or be, these are life skills that will serve them well. And if I succeed in teaching this to them, I won't feel nearly as guilty when their future girlfriends realize that the boys never learned to consistently pick up their dirty socks.
Everyone can use a humility lesson now and then, right?
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