A Moment in My Life – Monday, January 25, 2021
Do you ever have one of those mornings where you wake up happy and eager to start your day? You’re on top of the world. You feel invincible. You jot down a long exhaustive list of things you know you could accomplish before bedtime. Then, your morning begins—only to get derailed from the get-go. That’s how yesterday started. I sat down at my MacBook and began writing my Morning Pages when my friend Carol texted asking if I was attending the family forum after the Zoom church service. What family forum? It was announced in the weekly church email that I hadn’t looked at yet. “Avoidance is never a good plan.” “Yes, officer, I realize that now” goes the dialogue in my head. Yeah, sure, I’ll attend the family forum. What choice do I have? If I don’t attend, I don’t know why they called the meeting. Attending the meeting means I may not complete all the tasks on my list. What can I do? Nothing except flow with it. After all, how long could the meeting possibly run?
At the start of the meeting, the moderator announced that it wouldn’t run longer than an hour. Okay, cool, I can sit through an hour on Zoom. A family forum is like coming to the dinner table with questions and concerns, and everything goes. It was a quiet table until fifty-five minutes to the hour when the first real comment hit the table, and the can of worms wiggled onto the table, running over the allotted time. The moderator force ended the meeting at 1:40. I was grateful. We were all starving.
I threw together a quick rotisserie chicken and kale sandwich, and the phone ran as I bit greedily into my sandwich. It was my sister-in-law who never calls me. Two days ago, she texted saying she’ll call me tomorrow. That was the day before. She didn’t call. I figured she forgot, or most likely, changed her mind. At that moment, my sandwich was the love of my life—nobody got between us. I returned her call afterward, and she had my undivided attention for the next hour.
Next up, I needed to get my hour walk in before it got too dark. By the time I finished, it was already 4:30 p.m., and I hadn’t touched a single task off my list yet. I wanted to call it a day. After all, there wasn’t much time left. What was the point in beginning anything? The little guys sitting on my shoulders argued the case sending me down the yay and the nay paths. I glanced at the clock and decided to start something and see how much I get done before the timer goes off to make my daily call to my father-in-law at 5:10. I began with soaking the three toilets before I started vacuuming the upstairs. After vacuuming, I cleaned the toilets. I still had time, so I dusted the master bedroom. I even spot treated some stains I saw on the carpet. All before the timer went off. After I chatted with Dad for ten minutes, I decided to continue working until dinner, and I edited a letter. After dinner, I got in a mani before my niece called at 8 p.m. My nails dried and hardened while we talked for 1.5 hours.
It was an extremely satisfying day. I turned in for the night with a big smile on my face and a song in my heart. Had I caved to ‘what’s the point in starting’ like the old me would have done, I would’ve turned in with regret and kicking myself. Instead, I chose my late husband, Mark’s way of working on tasks a little at a time and got it all done. It was a great feeling honoring his memory by doing it his way, and it proved to me that it really works!
