Raw

Somehow today we stumbled into the routines that carried us through before the holidays. Right now, I am waiting for my little studio to warm up so I can practice with violinist and my violist before we go grab dinner and take our cellist to his lesson. I am steeling myself for waking up tomorrow morning when Raven has already left for the airport and even though this is a one-night trip, I know it will be followed with another trip next week and one two weeks after that and I won’t flip the page on the calendar and look any further ahead than that.

I have accomplished nothing on my list of things I should get to today, and am capable of just enough self-examination to ask myself if the way that makes me feel is proportional to the situation. I may joke about setting the bar low: everyone has something to wear, everybody has had an opportunity to eat something, the house has not burned down, nobody is bleeding, nobody has ingested anything too awful. But maybe finding the routine is a chance to check over the elements of my day and make sure that they do line up with what I want from life. I was getting excited that maybe I would get Rainer signed up for a co-op preschool next fall because these things all have January/February deadlines, and a friend started telling me which fundraising committee involved the least amount of work and I realized I couldn’t stand fundraising. I hate fundraising. I have all these vague ideas about the sort of mother I should be, ideas that involve active involvement with PTA’s and committees, and at the same time these things always meet in the evening when I am practicing with the kids, doing homework with the kids, taking the kids to lessons, on a good night, cooking with the kids, or, more rarely, spending time with friends or my husband so that I can come back to parenting happy and enthusiastic.

I do want to change the world. I am inspired by the people in my life doing it in all the different ways that they are. But I am, realistically, going to make micro-changes and not volunteer long hours when it takes away from my time to raise my kids and to read and write and think. And I am in love with not just my notebooks, but also with my blog, with the blogs I read, with the comments exchanged, and the sudden eye-opening insights and understanding that we none of us have to struggle this struggle alone. So I practice gentleness, and nod, yep, not a lot of externally measurable things visibly accomplished today, some days are like that.