Words to the wiser...

It's been the kind of day where high expectations turn sour. My kids started swimming lessons at a new place and I was eager for them to recreate the kind of memories I had growing up swimming and diving on teams, making lifelong friends, enjoying the sun and the chemical smell of chlorine on brown skin and greenish hair, as well as learning a skill that has led me to a lifetime of healthy exercise and pride. Both my kids have become pretty good in the water this summer; Cleo just on the brink of figuring out freestyle and actual strokes and Flynn suddenly fully able to submerge his body and figure out how to come up for air without the choking/gagging fits that make early swimming pool adventures so freaky. So needless to say, it felt like the right moment to pull in an "expert" and take things to the next level with some lessons. Wrong. Cleo was self conscious about her new earplugs (she just had ear surgery and adenoids taken out) and complained throughout the lesson about the frigid water and the too tight googles, and Flynn, who was fine swimming before the lesson started, showing off for the teacher and everything, utterly and completely lost his shit as soon as two little boys got in screaming and crying for their moms. He was all of the sudden terrified and started crying for me and basically punching and kicking the teacher in the face for 20 minutes. My expectations once again did not match reality which led to lots of disappointed tension around these parts. And then my increasingly not so trusty Volvo conked out again putting it a wrench in plans and now I'm staring down the barrel of a $2000 repair bill that I can't afford and thinking, how did this glorious Summer Monday go so wrong?

I have a delightful best friend with an equally delightful mother who once told me years ago that she loved to clean her house because "it was the only area in her life she could control." It made sense to me then and it makes sense to me now. It made a lot of sense to me today as I seethed and anxiously wrung hands wondering what I should do with the car, with the day, with the crazy children fighting at my feet....I realized that folding laundry and doing dishes and organizing my toiletries was the only clarity I had. I don't think it made me any less grumpy, but it definitely calmed the nerves and made me feel a sense of much needed control in a world where everything was starting to feel like an aimless spinning top.

Maybe it is my semi-Mormon upbringing, or the Pioneer "put your shoulder to the wheel" genes, but I've always had trouble settling into being idle. Don't get me wrong, I still indulge very frequently in non-productivity, but it never feels as natural as I hoped or want , certainly never as guiltless. I go out on the deck at dusk to sit and watch the aspen leaves quake and all I can think of is the laundry I need to change over, or the email I need to reply to, or the fact that I didn't vacuum my car or call Grandma Great. I think idleness feels too often like indulgence in our culture and it is probably to our detriment. I once read a book called How to be Idle which I thoroughly enjoyed and would recommend, espousing the art of idleness alla Oscar Wilde--watching clouds move, taking naps, playing ukelele, coming up with delightful quips, drinking gin at midday--.and though on the face of things I love the idea of "chateau relaxo" ways of being (a phrase my once guru and boss Chrisanne coined and i dearly love) and not having an agenda, in practice, I find I end up getting depressed with myself. I think I need to have purpose in my day. I need to have goals and be able to make decisions, otherwise I become stuck. But a day like today teaches me that there is a difference in having purpose and having expectations. Purpose is having hopeful definition, a road map of sorts, expectations are plain fallacy. The world works in mysterious ways and believing that it's my way or the highway seems only to lead me to disappointment....and lots of cleaning!