Most mornings, we revere a quiet pace around my home. We celebrate
slowness. But today, it is almost noon, and we are late, and I
can’t find my keys (though I know I had seen them on the counter
just moments before). I am suspicious.
“Cassie, have you seen my keys?”
“Yes, I’ve seen them.” My three-year-old is sprawled on the couch
with her feet straight up in the air. She taps her boots together.
“Where did you see them?”
“They are right to the left of behind.”
I try again, this time lowering my voice: “Where are my keys,
honey? I don’t want to be late.”
She gets up. She picks up a ballpoint pen from the table and hands it to
me. “Here are your keys, Mommy,” she manages to say before
collapsing in hysterics.
She looks up, still laughing. (I’m not). “Oh, now that was
a silly joke, Mommy,” she laughs some more. “That was a pen.
Not your ke-e-e-e-eys.” She pulls her baby sister under the table
with her. They are both giggling.
Ten minutes later, I had found my keys (where I, not she,
had left them), and got on with the business of loading the
baby in her car seat, finding the preschooler’s “might-needs”
for the day, and stashing them into the appropriate places for
later. For the older one, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich
and a “monkey juice,” so named for the orangutan that once
graced the Tang pouches. For the younger one, crackers,
cantaloupe, and a juice sippee cup. And I’ve finally remembered
our library books.
Apparently, hurrying is antithetical to a preschooler’s very
nature. On her way to the car, she stops to hide on the front porch.
Then she makes a pit stop into her playhouse. Then she pauses
to tell me that potatoes don’t have blood, but that she does.
As Cassie stands in the driveway reliving yesterday’s paper cut
and the ensuing Barbie Band-Aid, I resist the urge to check
my watch.
It is then that I have to remind myself that my sense of
urgency is, today, self-serving. I’m a busy mom, but I work
hard to keep my days with the kids “business free.” And
today, we are going to a simple playgroup. At this playgroup,
we all drop in and out. No one is watching the clock to see
when we arrive. And no one in particular is waiting for us.
I realize, all at once, that my self-created melodrama is
strangely comforting to me. It’s a reminder of those days
before kids when someone was waiting for me to arrive
somewhere. When my false sense of urgency
was reflected back to me.
Then I wonder, at this time, what I’m modeling to my kids.
Because we can’t simultaneously be frazzled and calm.
We can’t simultaneously be agitated and attentive.
We can’t simultaneously be fragmented and mindful.
I realize that I could be taking a cue from the child and
not the other way around. And so I give myself a gentle
reminder of the reasons we have consciously chosen a
slower pace for our family. How nourishing it can
be to give a child – and her parents – time to contemplate.
Time to allow the day to play out on its own.
Time to accomplish things one slow activity at a time.
We have just hit the highway when Cassie yells from her
car seat: “Mommy! We forgot to play the ‘Three Little Pigs’!”
She gasps in mock horror, leaving me to wonder where she got
her sense of drama.
“We’ll play when we get home,” I say. “We’ll have plenty of time.”
And so we do.
Susie Cortright is the founder of
– an online magazine devoted to helping parents celebrate life with children. She is also the creator of Momscape’s Scrapbooking Playground:
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