“Why are you breathing like that?” my youngest asks. I’ve just let out three slow deep breaths while sitting at a red light.
What am I to say?
That I have not stopped moving or typing or thinking since 5am and breathing like this right now at 5pm is helping to keep me alive? That it was involuntary? Necessary? Regulatory? That breathing like this gives me strength to drop her off at gymnastics, drive to a store to pick up those things, then come back to get her to make it home before the Zoom call, before I have to then . . .
This is why I take audible deep breaths, daughter.
But what I say is more along the lines of, “I guess my body just wanted to.”
Around this time last year, I started two new part-time jobs. A coincidence really. A happy accident, as Bob Ross would say. Due to the cost of groceries and the gift of having both car insurance and a fresh teenage driver, I sought work outside of my dream of writing stories about life to help make a living. As I accepted one job, another short-turned-longer-term opportunity arose that dovetailed too nicely with my new schedule for me not to say yes.
Two weekends ago, my oldest daughter had a three-day swim meet close enough from home I could have driven back and forth each day. And far enough away that if we didn’t get a place to stay, we’d be up before the sun and home after when we should be in bed, and in between her prelim races and finals each day, she’d be taking her obligatory nap upright in the front seat of our car. Also, it was the weekend of the time change.
I texted a friend: I’m all bent out of shape about the money, regarding the hotel.
She texted back: a year from now, you’d give anything for this time with her. A year from now, you won’t remember the money.
A year from now, my daughter will be in her second semester of college.
Just the thought brings tears to my eyes.
And so we stay at a clean but unremarkable hotel and go to dinner and she takes her naps in an actual bed and we get take out that we eat on the same bed and pop popcorn and watch a movie we wouldn’t watch if her siblings were around. In the mornings and evenings, she swims and cheers on her friends. My heart’s in my throat for all of it.
Spring, and the new birth of green buds, brings a particular type of chaos to large families, to all families — kids’ sports, school field trips, the press of work deadlines, the desire to stay connected to family and friends through all of it. It feels so similar, this crush, but markedly different than last year.
Instead of an overwhelm like the whole sky is grey, it’s a known thing now, the shadow of a passing cloud.
At the swim meet, my daughter did well, though she only dropped time in one event. Talking about it later, over shared pizza and garlic knots, she wasn’t upset the way I thought she might be. “A year ago,” she says, “I was consistently swimming three seconds slower than this.” She takes a bite of fluffy dough. “Now, I’m consistently three seconds faster.” She nods, assuring herself, “So it’s okay.”
A year ago, I was in the throes of going back to work, of adjusting to and coordinating schedules, deadlines, and needing to be dressed and out of the house at certain times.
A year from now, I hope I will not be crying anymore over the mere mention of my daughter leaving for college.
What we feel in a moment, experience in a season, just may not be a long enough time for accurate reflection.
Maybe our unit of measurement should be longer.
"a year from now, you’d give anything for this time with her. A year from now, you won’t remember the money." THAT is a helpful reframe, especially when I'm cranky about losing sleep or things going undone because I chose to sit and watch the movie. Future me will thank me for pausing to be present in these moments.
I went from making soup to crying a little bit. Thank you for writing. I'm going to be thinking on this all day today: "What we feel in a moment, experience in a season, just may not be a long enough time for accurate reflection.
Maybe our unit of measurement should be longer."
I'm in the middle of something, so to speak, and you're right I don't have the space necessary to reflect yet.