Running in place

Ever feel like your life is a treadmill instead of a trail? I know. I just finished a post not that long ago about road maps and journeys. It's all true. But the last couple of weeks the residents of the itty bitty yellow cape are restless. School's just around the corner. Yes. The air and light seem to change by the day, taking on the softness, the crispness of late summer. Oh, how I love the month of August. My saving grace. Kids are a little tetchy with one another. Husband and wife are a little edgy, too. It seems like we're all just sitting tight, waiting for the end of something, and the beginning.

Restless.

I get this way from time to time. I start to remember what I did in my former life: being a student, traveling, having a career. I start to remember what it was like to wake on a Saturday morning with the whole day stretched before me. Heaven. I remember that once, I had goals and plans.

This month I turn thirty-five. True. And I'm itchy all over. Itchy for something to change. Itchy for a new direction. Just itchy.

I've taken the liberty of suggesting a few possibilities to Mark--things we could do to shake life up a bit, to restore that frothy deliciousness to the top of our root beer float lives, which seem to have gone a tad flat. Ready?

Get a dog.
Get a rabbit.
Get chickens.
Get a job.
Move.
Write a book.
Redecorate our bedroom.
Reseed our front yard.
Take a trip cross country in a rented RV...

The extravagance of the suggestion depends on how restless I'm feeling in a day. Truth be told, I'm restless all the time. It's just my nature. But the last month or so, I don't even rest more than a few hours at night before waking to toss and turn until morning.

"There's something seriously wrong with you," Mark told me the other day. "You're in a valley right now," he told me today.

Yeah. Well. It happens to the best of us stay-at-homers. You see, in two weeks two of my three littles will be in school. And my baby starts in January. And I'm thinking that the phase of life where I devoted my whole existence to the caring for and rearing of babies is in its Autumn.

Be patient. Don't commit to anything you'll wish you hadn't. Practice gratitude. Live in the moment. These are the things I chant in my head while turning circles in my kitchen, not knowing whether to pick up the mess again, or fold the wash, or start dinner when all I really want to do is lie down under the maple in our front yard and watch the sky. When all I really want to do is hold those babies so tight, there's no room for them to grow any bigger than they already have.

Restless. Running on a self-made treadmill. Wishing I could make time stand still, and wishing we could just get on with it. So this afternoon I did the only thing I could: One hour wasted online looking at puppies. Argh. Then ten minutes of reading Ann Lamott's new Help Thanks Wow. In it she writes that there are three basic prayers that cover all of life's phases, trials, and highs. Help when you're face down in the dirt with nowhere else to go. Thanks when you realize that God could have left you down there on your face in the dirt, but instead put the forces into motion that drew you to your feet. Wow when you can't get over how amazing it all was and is. When the wonder of your own breath, when the wonder of holding your own baby stops you in your tracks. Wow.

How does a person get back to Wow? I looked up from my book and saw two sun-tanned bodies dancing in water and light. And that was my answer. I joined them. For five glorious minutes we squealed and squirted great streams of water into the August sky. Our neighbor popped her head out the back door, "Hey! Would you keep it down out there?" All smiles. "Sounds like a party!"

"It is!" I shouted back. "Come on over."

"Nah," she laughed. "I like dry."

I don't I thought. But I keep choosing it. Time to put my head to the horizon and look for the Wow. It's not likely to fall in my lap when I'm looking at the dust gathering on my feet. Now is what I have. Now.

I'm not sure how to solve the problem of what to do Now or how to embrace this current season knowing that part of it involves the folding up and putting away of something I've held so dear for so long. I do like a good challenge, though. Time to get off the treadmill, pick up my feet and put one in front of the other again. See what sights there are to behold. See what lies on the other side of this rainbow. Who knows? There might be unicorns...or puppies.

Tomorrow is Monday. My Now challenge for the week? Do ten totally frivolous things. Number one: Lie down under the maple in our front yard and watch the sky with my three babies, while they all still fit in my arms.