The whole time-space continuum goes into bizarro mode once you have a baby. I used to be that person who lived by the adage that "being early is being on time, being on time is being late, and being late is unforgivable." Then along came the BabyGuy. The first few months you just have no concept of what day it is and what time. You spend endless hours stuck on the couch with a tall water bottle, the remote control, and a baby on your lap who is either eating or sleeping. People tell you, "I'll come by around 11" and you are genuinely surprised like it's the first you've heard of it when they show up. You retain no knowledge, you keep no clock, you are in survival mode. Where does the time go?!? Admittedly, you know there's some falling asleep that goes on...by you. It's hard to be tired and timely!
Then the time comes when you can get out of the house to do errands and be out in the world of other humans with your child. It's all fine until you have to meet up with someone at a certain time. I never knew how hard it is to get somewhere on time while handling a small human being. There are always diapers that go wrong as you are about to leave, shoes that are lost, hats that are thrown into the deepest depths of a pile of snow. Trying to arrange doctor's appointments becomes a crap shoot. I began to refer to a meeting time as "a window of time when I most likely will arrive....or maybe not." This of course goes against all my innate punctuality. But, I had to throw in the towel on this one. In trying to be the best mother possible, I had to concede that being on time was not going to be part of the package.
Over the course of the first year of your child's life, things get a little more social. You have classes you start taking with the wee one, play dates, and mother's group events. Leaving an hour beforehand to go ten minutes down the road is not unheard of. Why would anyone do this? Well, on your way to wherever you are going, chances are you forgot a bottle. Or your diaper bag. Or sippy cup. Or your dear child has decided to fall asleep in the car and you don't want to wake him, so you will sit in the car and let them nap for an half an hour until they wake up. And you will still be ten minutes late. I don't really understand how this crazy math of being a mom and being on baby's schedule works, but YOU WILL NEVER BE ON TIME. SO STOP TRYING.
I do have to say, being a student of meditation has helped me tremendously with all of this. Doing mindfulness meditation has given me the ok to live in the moment to experience fully the precious time I spend with the BabyGuy. Kids are slow, mainly because they are learning to do something new nearly every day. They don't just go for a walk with you, they savor the click-clack of the stroller wheels over blocks of cement on your stroll through the city. They enjoy grabbing and examining the leaves of the trees you pass on your walk through the park. Everything ordinary can become more special to you if you enjoy the gift of time, the time you are spending with your child. Using mindfulness to be organized helps but the factor that is constantly changing and can't be guaranteed is the personality of your child on that given day that you are trying to get somewhere or do something.
I find that I am very tired...and it comes from trying to keep a very fast tiny human from doing dangerous things like pulling furniture down on himself, putting things in his mouth that he can choke on, throwing himself headfirst off of his high chair, etc. It's like being an on-duty cop, you can't ever shut it down, you have to be vigilant.
The time doing something is always three times as long for you as the time it takes your child to un-do it, cleaning for example. It's a new kind of math, the mother math. Time for yourself, well, that goes away for a while. It's been eight months since a haircut, nine months since a weekend away, seven months since a romantic date night out. But as they say, the days are long but the years are short. Every night before I put the BabyGuy to sleep I tell him, "you will never be this little again. You are only getting bigger each day." So I try to savor the slowness of the day, the magic of little fingers that are trying hard to do something new, the tentative steps that soon turn into a run, because as cliche as it sounds, it all goes by so fast.
So to everyone I am late for, I'm sorry, but it's just where I'm at right now. Bear with me, it won't be forever and it's not an implication that your time is not valuable to me. I'm just on the mommy train and it never leaves the station on time. And as BabyGuy would say, "toot toot beep beep." We'll get there eventually.
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