Parenting — The Art of Surfing Chaos

I start each day with a Plan. The Plan is usually formulated the previous night as I drift off to sleep. Every day, without fail, The Plan goes awry. Today’s Plan went wrong before it even got started. Last night I lay in bed, my mind buzzing with thoughts and plans. Eventually one of the thoughts was “Hey, why am I not asleep yet?” At 2 am I got out of bed hoping that a snack would slow my brain and let me sleep. I wandered toward the kitchen, but was distracted by the light in Kiki’s bedroom. It was on. Kiki was awake drawing in bed. She’d had a nightmare and chose this way to deal with it. I was pleased with her maturity in dealing with her dream. We both got a snack and went back to bed.

Then morning arrived. The Plan had me out of bed at 7:30 to make breakfast for kids, so they could eat at 8 and get ready for swim lessons. I’d have time to eat and check email during that time. Nope. I dragged myself out of bed at 8. Groggily put breakfast food on the table and rousted the kids out of bed. Then we had Clash of the Crankies. Kiki and I had the Incident of the Hairbrush, the Incident of the Missing Flip Flops, the Incident of You WILL Appologize to Your Sister, and the ever popular Incident of He’s Looking At Me. I skipped my breakfast and email because of Incident Management and we all arrived at swim lessons.

Swim lessons are nice for me because I hand four kids to their teachers and then go sit in the gallery to watch. It is a blessed quiet space where someone else has to manage my kids. Today I spent that time revising The Plan. I’d bring the kids home, get them all changed, eat, and take a desperately overdue shower. Then I would be back on track with my original Plan, just a little later. On the way home we had the Incident of I Want That Seat, the Incident of Stop Singing, the Incident of It’s Not Fair, and upon our arrival home we had the Incident of Will You Kids Please Get OUT OF THE CAR! Then came the bustle of removing wet swimsuits from small children because heaven forbid that they do it themselves. Howard waited patiently through this process with a pile of Schlock scripts for me to read. With kids dressed I mixed a bowl of oatmeal, put it in the microwave, and read scripts for Howard. It was good reading, they made me laugh. Whew. I could eat breakfast, have a shower and be back on track.

Four bites into my oatmeal, my neighbor knocked on the door. She wondered if I could watch her four kids while she took her car for an oil change. This neighbor and I do this kind of spur-of-the-moment babysitting exchange frequently. I love being able to run off and leave some kids behind, so I try to oblige unless I have a concrete reason not to do so. Plan adjustment, shower would have to wait. In fact breakfast had to wait while I inventoried children and got them settled playing. Then I ate.

Somewhere during the morning, my back brain began composing this blog post. I realized that this morning is a perfect example of the kind of chaos surfing that parents must do daily. I have to ride the ebbs and flows of the needs of 4 children, a husband, myself, and our small business. The Plan seems to never last more than an hour without being adjusted and reconfigured. Sometimes I reach the end of the daily ride and I’ve accomplished the goals with which I began the day. Other times I reach the end of the ride having abandoned my original goals and having accomplished something else. Occasionally the entire ride is nothing more than trying to keep my head above water. On those days all goals other than pure survival are abandoned. No matter how the day turns out, the mental picture of me trying to surf upon waves of chaos makes me giggle. Somehow that laughter makes the ride easier to manage.