17. Time

Taken in September, during a bus tour of Dublin.

I don’t have time for anything these days.  At night, after the kids are in bed, sure.  I can take a few hours to wind down, relax on the couch, do nothing and think about nothing.  But during the day?  I’m lucky if I have time to get the mail.  The other day as I was dropping the kids off at my mom’s, we realized we had forgotten something essential at home.  So I went back and retrieved it, but as I was driving back to my mom’s, I almost got into an accident.  Not “life flashed before my eyes” almost, but there was a slamming of the breaks, certainly.  I’m an excellent driver.  This doesn’t happen to me.  But it did and it shook me.  What was I in such a hurry for?  Are Valentine’s cards THAT important?

I paused for a moment at the stop sign, took a long blink and thought “Slow down.  Breathe.  You have plenty of time.”  While that may not be true, long-run speaking, for the right here and now, it is.  Whatever needs to happen will happen eventually.  Wherever I need to be, I’ll get there.  I just need to slow down, breathe, and remember there is always something more important than whatever I’m doing at that moment.  Mainly and most pointedly, surviving the day.

I don’t have time for anything these days, but I am making time for that which is important to me.  Everything else can wait just a cotton-picking minute.  Which, as far as I can tell, is the same as any other minute.