I’ve been taking the girls to the park after I pick Mo up from school the past few days. The weather has been mild and everything is just a big slice of Stepford, but in a good way. There are other kids climbing all over the equipment and each other. There are moms with their mongrammed lunch sacks, pulling out juice box after juice box and snack trap after snack trap. There are ambitious babysitters juggling several charges of their own, plus several hangers-on. Mo and Co are quick to make friends with whomever is around, joining the pile of mosquito bitten arms and scratched-knee bearing legs. They look like a pile of puppies just rolling and tumbling along the mulch from one jungle gym to the next. When given a choice of where to play, though, my girls always come back to the swings.

It used to be that I would use their confinement in the bucket seats to make all the calls I hadn’t had a chance to make up until that point. I always feel that I have so much to do and not enough time to do it all in. In order to check things off of my list, in order to feel like I had accomplished something today, I would squeeze in some things during play time with the girls. Hey, trying to be all things to all people means having to do some overlapping on activities. And yet, while things were getting done, I was left feeling I’m moving so fast that everything is blurred together. It’s as if I’m trying to wrap up one thing in order to get to the next thing — just so I can wrap it up and check it off. I’m set on fast-forward and it sucks. I mean, really, that’s what it boils down to. I find that I’m wasting way too much time thinking about things that in the grand scheme, don’t even matter. I’m wasting time on “woulda, coulda, shoulda” instead of spending time on this.very.minute.

What’s worse is that at the end of the day, I know I have spent time with the girls, but I haven’t really been there. Like when I tell Co to stop picking her nose — she’s listening, but she’s not hearing me. Maybe it’s more like those early weeks when you bring your baby home from the hospital. You’re in such a state of sleep-deprived, raging hormonal delirum, that when you look at photos from that time, you’re surprised that you’re actually in the picture. You find yourself wondering, “When was this? Oh, I can’t believe she was ever that small! What happened to that shirt I have on? Why didn’t you tell me my eyebrows needed to be plucked? I look like Bert for cryin’ out loud!”

I’m sure I’ll have plenty of time to beat myself up about how little time I’m spending with the girls when I’m back in school this fall. But in the here and now of Summer 2009, I’m going to be there. I’m leaving the phone in my bag. We’ve got a voicemail system on the house phone that is under-used. I’ve got a sleep function on the computer that needs to be used, too. Hell, I’m may just turn the whole thing off. . .but baby steps, baby steps.

I’m looking for a normal pace. I’m looking for that contentment and ease that comes with pumping your legs on a park swing underneath a canopy of tall trees and afternoon sunlight.

I’m looking at my girls and loving what I see.