Kathy Smaltz
This afternoon, with thoughts of Thoreau and sixth block A.P. English lingering in my mind, I am thinking about his sage advice to, “Simplify! Simplify! Simplify!”
Which part of my busy life can I simplify this week so that I may live more deliberately? The pursuit of black baseball pants? Youth, Size Small (and for whose procurement I have scoured Target, Wal-Mart, and K-Mart – yes, it still exists – until giving up on discount stores and diving into Dick’s, where I could, at best, find a Youth Medium?) Is it, perchance the pursuit of a closet full of clothes (for me and four kids – my husband is on his own) more in keeping with the nippy fall weather with which we’re now starting off our days? Or can I continue to go indefinitely without buying new bras – replacements for those brave brassieres who have fought the good fight but who have no quick mail order substitution since the style I bought (and no, I won’t tell you how long I’ve had them) has long since been replaced by lacier lingerie? Or perhaps, to simplify, I can give up watching Season One of “The Wire” -- my husband’s and my latest Netflix affair with guilty pleasure T.V. that we watch, with our doors closed, after tucking the kids into bed, convinced that that they don’t overhear all the foul language and rapid fire gunshots the cops and criminals dish up in downtown Baltimore city? Oh, Thoreau. I was once like you. Single. No kids. I came home from my teaching job, and before attacking the stack of papers I’d accumulated throughout the day, I swung by the gym for step aerobics – all pony tails, lycra, and college sorority t-shirts – looking around the studio, surprised by how “old” some of the “girls” were whose shirts said they’d graduated all of five years ahead of me. Hmph. Back then, 29 was ancient. These same “girls” who I exercised next to mystified me on the weekends when I was out clubbing in D.C. “Why do they even bother?” I wondered. Pushing 30 was practically geriatric, yet there they were … dancing on the ‘80’s floor of Decades, rocking out to Rick singing “Jessie’s Girl.” Yesterday, my 7 year old daughter asked me to watch her perform a trick on the scooter. I stepped outside. I watched. She whizzed by, put both feet on the platform. I smiled and waved, smiled and waved. My thoughts were elsewhere. So too were my senses. I DID what she asked. She doesn’t know the difference between my pretending to pay attention and my REALLY paying attention. Does she? Last night, my son (her twin) told me about this wonderful book he’d discovered in the school library. “I can check it out tomorrow,” he said, “but I can only keep it for two days.” “Bring it home,” I told him, without thinking of the list of things on my Thursday “To-Do” list. “I’ll look at it with you.” There it is on the table.
Timelines of the Ancient World: A Visual Chronology From the Origins of Life To AD 1500. I noticed it as soon as I came home from work, and we looked at a few pages together – maybe 300 years worth or so? – before that impatient voice in my mind said, “Let’s go, let’s go! Speed it up! Only 2300 more years to go!” Luckily, right after, we came to a divider page, and I promised him we’d resume with King Tut later tonight when Daddy and I can both snuggle with him and hold the tome across our laps in our bed. (I hope we will I hope we will I hope we will.) Thoreau – the question I asked my students about you today was, “Did you have the right to give others advice on how to live their lives when you were OBVIOUSLY in a position of privilege regarding existential simplicity … re: lifestyle, education, and well … childlessness?” We never answered the question. What I do realize now is twofold: 1) When I live in the moment and really experience the time I’ve got with my kids, it’s oh-so-much better for all of us. When I don’t (like yesterday when I just smiled and waved), I feel like I’m on the outside looking AT all of it as opposed to being IN it, as a real life participant. 2) I am privileged to be thinking about any of this at all. Black baseball pants, clothes, bras, “The Wire,” Thoreau, this column. And my guess is, reader … that you are too.
Like many moms, Kathy drives a mini-van full of booster seats and Disney/Pixar DVD’s. When she’s not chauffeuring her kids, ages 10 and under, to school and activities, she teaches for Prince William County Public Schools, writes fiction, poetry, and this column about the challenges and rewards of being a mom to young children.
