I’m running. I wish it was on the road or trail, because then I wouldn’t feel so stressed out and I would be burning calories to boot, but no, I am just running. Running a zoo.
Tattoo Man’s quick turnarounds in port lately, coupled with obligations, activities, school work, laundry, gifts, school programs—they all begin to pile up on top of me until I am barely peeping out from under the slog pile. This is even after turning down most invitations and requests. My insides churn as I tick off lists every day, wishing for time to just stop and freeze while I complete something. My shoulder blades are permanently clinched together from the stress.
Then, in the midst of my racing mind today, this quote by Anna Quindlen, reflecting on time with her kids, stopped me dead cold:
“But the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make while doing this. I did not live in the moment enough.
This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of the three of them sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4, and 1. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night.
I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less.” ~ Anna Quindlen
Yes. Air floods my chest as the corset of stress is cut away. My heart swells, and I know my running is not action, but attitude. Treasure doing a little with me today, won’t you?