The Meaning in Minutes

It's been said that a woman's life becomes a series of details. I'd like to expand on that if I may. I rise to work before my family wakes up, commute to a day job, and then come home to see my sweet girl. In those broad strokes lie many other details I won’t bore you with, as I’m sure you live with them too, but a particular situation arose this morning I'd like to highlight.

This morning started out as a usual one: I was disgruntled at the sound of my alarm clock and then got out of bed and started to get ready for work to leave by 6:45am. I remembered I had to do something for this very site before taking off, and had woken up ten minutes earlier to as a result. So, when I was completely ready at 6:35am this special morning, I turned on my laptop and prepared to accomplish my tasks before leaving ten minutes later. I looked at my screen and realized that my wonderful partner and friend, Better Way Mom Sarah, had already taken care of it. I found myself with ten extra minutes.

In those ten minutes, I unpacked toiletries in my travel bag from a previous weekend trip, unloaded the dishwasher that had been run the night before, reloaded dirty dishes, folded some clothes from a laundry basket holding clean items, charged my cell phone and hung up every jacket I saw lying around. I did this automatically without thinking of any of it.  In fact, this is the first time I even recall doing it all. It really is something when you see it typed out.

What later struck me about this seemingly uneventful morning was that what I accomplished in that extra time, in the moment, didn’t occur to me. I didn't even consider my options on what to do with those ten minutes, I just starting "doing." Which is fine, I get things done left and right, though the momentum never seems to stop and the payoff of accomplishing chores has long since vanished. I'm just left with the process of doing it all without the awareness of what I'm actually doing.

There was a time not too long ago (about 23 months ago if we’re really counting, did I mention I have a toddler that age?) that I would have sat and considered my options on how to spend those ten minutes. I could have read my current book, or magazine, or turned on the television and sipped coffee and watched the news. I could have laid back down with my husband and felt his smooth, sweet skin on mine. I love that, and I don't get it enough. 

I could have done any number of nice, relaxing, indulgent things for those ten minutes that would have felt very luxurious. I think it's funny how I define luxury these days — not with first-class tickets or diamonds or designer clothes, but by time. And it’s not that I thought of these ideas and rejected them; the point is that I didn't even consider them.  They didn’t occur to me as options. I wonder when it was that my mind removed them from the a la carte menu; I didn't even notice.

What those now infamous minutes taught me is this: sometimes I need to make time to be self-serving and consider some of the options I described above. The term self-serving seems like a dirty word when applied to moms, doesn't it? As if we're not supposed to be self-serving, we're only supposed to serve. But the truth is, we have more to give others when we also give to ourselves. If that's the case, maybe we could all stand to get a little dirty.

Maybe Einstein is right, and there’s no such thing as time. It's just a made of up theory that allows us all to wear watches and set timers and hear beeps go off to notify us of more things to do.  I would have liked to have met Einstein as a mother and discussed how significant minutes are to time-outs, and night feedings, and nursing schedules. Maybe he would have smiled widely and told me everything was relative, and I would have laughed with him and forgotten all about what I had to do in that moment.

Author: Amy