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by Kathy Buckworth
“Are you busy?” These three
words are the most volatile, annoying, and stress inducing
words any mother can hear. Whether they’re coming from
a teenage daughter looking for either a trip to the mall,
another driving lesson or the golden opportunity to wash her
field hockey socks, down to the five year old son standing
in front of you with his big blue eyes awash with the expectation
that there is nothing better that you can think of doing besides
playing the game of Sorry for the 27th time that day. The
minute our children are born, we become eternally, frustratingly,
tirelessly and mind-numbingly busy. To paraphrase Jerry Seinfeld,
however, “not that there’s anything wrong with
that.” Stay with me on this for a minute.
There are people who will tell you that they are “crazy
busy”, even when they are unencumbered with any offspring.
They are busy in the sense that they do fill every minute
of their days with meaningful and enjoyable tasks. However,
they are not in the realm of a parents’ busy circle
of hell if they are telling you this on their way out to a
museum, movie theatre, book launch, or gallery opening. Particularly
if you are at that particular moment excited about the prospect
of going grocery shopping for some “alone time.”
It’s all relative. The busy-ness of a newborn parent
is measured in terms of the ratio of hours slept versus activities
to be performed. That is to say that many of the tasks that
are being demanded of you are fairly pedestrian and easily
performed…on a good night’s sleep. Reduce that
sleep to 6 fitful starts and stops over an 8 hour period,
and washing sleepers, having a shower, and remembering where
you put your keys down become Herculean efforts. (Not to mention
that pesky detail of being responsible for the fragility of
a new life.)
As the baby grows, and you (perhaps like me) add to your brood
at an alarming rate, you recognize that the busy you thought
you had when you were a) single and/or b) childless did seem
like a “good” busy. Now that your days are filled
with chauffeuring children to endless lessons, hockey arenas,
friend’s homes, school functions and the aforementioned
mall, while racing home in between to throw in that 7th load
of laundry, unload the dishwasher for the 3rd time that morning,
make 6 calls to 6 different doctors of teeth, bones, needles
and backs, madly scratching out school registration forms,
planning your frozen food dinner and trying to find the elusive
½ inch scrap of “blankie” for a wailing
toddler, it’s hard to find the “good” in
the “busy”.
Recently as my husband sat slumped over a squirming child,
trying to remedy an unfortunate hockey tape incident, he looked
up at me and said “Why are we always so busy?”
Restraining myself from pointing out the fact that it was
his idea to get the third child involved in hockey, his idea
to have both bathrooms renovated at the same time, and his
idea to have his entire family over for Sunday brunch the
next day, I asked him this “If we weren’t driving
them around, we’d be watching them fight. It’s
not a question of this versus free time. It’s a question
of how you are busy. Now pass me the flipping Sorry game.”
All I have to do now is convince my four kids that waggling
a half empty glass of chardonnay is in fact an appropriate
response to the question “Are you busy?”
Kathy Buckworth’s latest book, “Journey
to the Darkside” is available at bookstores everywhere.
Watch Kathy on Life Network’s “Birth Days”,
Sunday nights at 10:00 EST, and visit www.kathybuckworth.com
Funny Mummy appears monthly.
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