I’m a little burned out on talking about how busy life is, which is a sort of hypocrisy, I suppose. I’ve been recoiling from the insistence that we are all so overbooked, so expectedly swamped.

What I’m interested in walking is the line between: deliberately choosing how I spend my time and embracing the inherent frenzy of this life we’ve chosen. There is space there, where these phrases we continually invoke (“life is so crazy right now!”) do not imply punishment. Where the fact that I’ve discovered Aidy has been talking out loud to her narwhal toy for the past half hour in her room, instead of getting her clothes on, which is what I thought she was doing, is amusing, instead of an indication that something is amiss in the organizational structure of our family’s life; something that requires fixing. It just is. She is like that.

What better time, then, to sink into summer with this year’s list of goals? Because, what I think I’ve always been after is not trying to fill a lacking schedule, but to ensure the schedule retains room for these dalliances…these attempts at achievements. Both.

Gabe is going to sleepaway camp for the first time this summer and recently got into quite a fraught state, asking me how many days he had until he went. He wasn’t worried about going, he said (and I believe him), he was worried about how many days he’d get to spend at our neighborhood pool in total, considering he’d be away for a few weeks and missing precious diving board hours.

“Well, that’s the thing about life,” I told him, “You sometimes have to say no to one thing so you can say YES to another.”

He didn’t appreciate that attempt at philosophy. So I tried again. I told him it was going to be a great summer. We’ll do lots of things, I said, you just can’t do them all at once. And sometimes, it’s very good to do nothing (he doesn’t agree on that point, but 11-year-old boys don’t know what they’re talking about.)

Because the busy life? That just is. But you can flip the narrative on its head.

Not: what did I miss?

But: what did I make time for?

Summer goals 2022:

go paddle boarding
see a musical
take evening strolls with Maisie and anyone who cares to join us
run a 5K with J and the 169 crew
take the fam to Quassy
attend a (or create my own) writing workshop or retreat
go shopping with my mom
finish “Ulysses”
visit Portland (Maine)
have a fancy night out with Aidy
read in the hammock
fill the back patio with pots of flowers
walks (many) with friends
learn the basics of sailing
submit my book of essays to publishers
day trips and afternoon outings: visit Storm King, the Book Barn and a Connecticut beach
get the office attic set up for warmer weather
explore electric cars
go to the movies
write weekly posts
go back to Glidden Point Oysters
happy hour on the Southport rocks, at the pool and at Contois Tavern
use my cookbooks

A few weeks ago I began experiencing some unpleasant, although fairly mild symptoms that seemed to be related to my stomach, vague as they were. A slight queasiness, akin to the something-like-carsickness of early pregnancy (oh my god, don’t even, I was not pregnant). Sharp-ish pains, only once strong enough for me to tell the children I was going upstairs to lie down, and they felt concerned enough that they brought me tea (angels, occasionally!) A general sense of simply-not-good from time to time, like when your system isn’t quite working properly.

Finally, recognizing that these not-extreme but persistent symptoms weren’t going away, I booked a doctor’s appointment, certain that it, and my inability to accurately describe these amorphous physical sensations would yield a diagnosis of: it’s all in your head - or, terminal cancer.

And yet, hallelujah, that is not what happened. My PA listened to my litany of complaints and immediately suggested a rather mundane, non-terminal diagnosis: acid reflux. Acid reflux, she said, might not always manifest the way you imagine and could, in fact, feel like what I was describing. Could be stress, she said, could be inherited (yes and yes). She prescribed a multi-week course of proton-pump inhibitor (generic Nexium) medication until my system recovered. She scheduled a follow up to ensure that this course of action was effective, and told me that after several weeks the regimen would have helped my body repair itself enough that I could likely ditch the drugs until presented with a subsequent bout of the same.

I was very happy for the quick answer and simple solution. I began taking the medicine once a day, first thing in the morning and my symptoms dispersed rapidly, reappearing here and there over the next couple weeks, but not in the continual matter I’d experienced pre-appointment.

This felt like magic, although I’m well aware it’s merely a success story of modern medicine. Furthermore, the solution she’d provided felt like magic, true. But it also felt like something else. A declaration, perhaps: you are getting older, and your body has some new “features.”

Because - and yes, I’m fortunate in this regard - it was the first time I was prescribed medicine for a condition like this. Not antibiotics to cure a bacterial sinus infection, or steroids to quell the ceaseless poison ivy I got a couple summers ago, but Nexium, a drug used to treat a condition I’d always associated with somebody older than me. One I’d always associated with my father, actually, who was plagued by this same problem and who, I assume, gifted me the genetic disposition referenced by my wise PA.

Standing barefoot in the wet grass one cold, early morning after the diagnosis, ensuring the dog didn’t slip out our degrading gate, I frowned at the now-familiar sensation (a mild burning that necessitated an extended sigh). “Dadddddddddddd,” I muttered out loud to the dog, to the birds, hopefully not to any early-rising neighbors. An accusation and a declaration of empathy, delivered to a posthumous recipient.

This was the first time, too, I had to think about possibly problematic habits, habits that my younger body would have handled effortlessly. Sipping coffee all morning on an empty stomach isn’t necessarily good for acid reflux, I was forced to conclude, noting that my father, too, employed this same pattern. These habits, good or bad, mark who we are, after all. So, maybe I’ll become a person who eats yogurt and fruit after just one cup of coffee, I decided. I both didn’t like and rose to the challenge.

I was listening to a podcast recently and something I heard has been echoing through my mind in the days since, something that, somewhere in the synapses of my brain, made sense of this recent coming-of-middle-age affair. The interviewee - an author who wrote a book about how we choose to spend the limited time have on this earth - paraphrased a question he’d heard posed by a Jungian therapist regarding the most important question we can ask ourselves when doing anything at all. Not: “Will this make me happy?” But instead: "Will this enlarge or diminish me?”

Will this enlarge or diminish me? The choices we make, the actions we take, the way we choose to spend our attention. These moments are the materials that craft our one and only life.

I thought about this just yesterday, watching Gabe (wild hair, tight black soccer socks pulled over shin guards, Sonic the Hedgehog bright blue t-shirt) spot his soccer team practicing on the field behind the middle school from where we stood in the parking lot on top of the steep hill that leads to the grass below. He put his hand up to his eyes, like a boat captain and sprinted down the slope, unafraid of falling (which would undoubtedly be my fate should I try the same).

Aidy, inspired, told me when I called her back to the car to head home, that she had to “do her exercises first,” and followed in the footsteps of her big brother, proceeding to run full speed down the hill and then in a large circle, galloping decidedly away from the sound of my protestations, quite literally illustrating an act of expansion, her circular circuits widening with each loop.

I paused. Will this enlarge or diminish me? Resting here, the former. Forcing departure on this finally spring-like evening was the habitual response, and, I think, the wrong answer. A soccer mom, on the edge of a field teeming with mini players; once a designation that felt constrictive to a younger, less experienced self. Now, an important role. One of many.

Will this enlarge or diminish me, I ask, holding my small white generic Nexium in the palm of my hand. Reassessing my morning routines. Ridding myself of the slow drag of minor symptoms, the acceptance of which means acceptance of uninvited but inevitable change.

I was lying in bed with J the other night, head on his shoulder, my favorite comfort eclipsing another busy day. Out of nowhere (although, considering what I’ve written here, maybe not out of nowhere at all) I said, faux-tragic, “My youth is gone.” And he replied, with total authenticity and a cheerful, resolute tone, gently correcting my labeling something a loss, when it was actually an invitation: “Well, I think it’s been gone for awhile.”

“Now,” he said. “We’re 44.”